Past and Present
by justonemore
Summary: While recovering from an injury, Goren relieves his cabin fever by trying to solve a 40 year old case. B/A Casefile Prob with Chapter 17 fixed. Thanks for letting me know
1. Chapter 1

Detective Alexandra Eames usually didn't worry about her partner's physical safety

Detective Alexandra Eames usually didn't worry about her partner's physical safety. His mental health, sure. Whether he was eating and sleeping, often. That he would put himself between a gun and an innocent bystander once too often, on occasion. Eames rarely worried, though, that Bobby would pull some kind of daredevil stunt. His hobbies - books, cars, and collecting eccentric people as friends - were relatively sedentary. He was claustrophobic. After an experience they had on a tall building with a sociopath who didn't know fear, he was afraid of heights. Bobby would not be the one spending his weekends bungee jumping.

Eames considered it, then, to be very ironic that she was carrying a pile of file folders and a bag of Chinese takeout to her very injured partner. Maybe it wasn't so out of character. They had chased a suspect into an abandoned building and he had run up to the second floor. When Bobby had followed him out of the exterior door, he had assumed that he would end up on the fire escape, not on some scaffolding. Even if he had anticipated the scaffolding, he wouldn't have thought "Hmm. This might have rotted through." Unfortunately, it had rotted through, sending Bobby and the suspect tumbling to the ground a full story below. The suspect was still in traction in the Bellevue prison ward, although he had been wheeled into his arraignment in a tasteful cast. Bobby had broken his left arm, and the doctors suspected a small tear in a ligament in his right leg. He wouldn't be able to go back to active duty for two months.

Eames rang Bobby's bell. His voice on the security intercom sounded surprised to hear from her, but he buzzed her in. When he opened his door to her, he was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. He hadn't shaved recently. One of those new external pressure casts covered his right calf, and he had a blue fiberglass cast on his left arm.

"Hi, Eames." He eyed the bag she was carrying.

"Kung Pao," she said.

"Are you staying," he asked, trying to sound casual. When she nodded, he continued, "I'll get plates." He hobbled to the kitchen.

"Bobby, let me do that," she protested.

"No, it's okay. I'm finding I can do a lot more than I thought." He got down a couple of plates and some silverware and set them on his small dining table. He convinced her to sit down and start in on the eggrolls. Now he was eying the folders she had brought. "What are those," he asked, trying again to sound casual. He had been going crazy at home, and it had only been a few days. When she had brought him home from the hospital, Eames had gone to the grocery store for him, so he had some staples, but he was desperate for something to do, something to think about. His internet connection didn't seem to be working. Maybe Eames had brought him her latest case.

"So Jeffries got put on Cold Case Review."

"Wow," said Goren. "What did he do to deserve that?"

"Parked in the Captain's spot three times in one week. Anyway, he sent a couple over for you. Said they appeared to be just up your alley – hopeless to solve and downright weird."

"I'm touched," said Bobby dryly, although he really was a bit intrigued.

"They are really old," said Eames helping herself to another eggroll. How did she stay so skinny, Goren wondered. He helped himself to some of the chicken, and started eating, but his glance kept drifting back to the folders. "Go ahead, Bobby." Goren smiled broadly as he put down his plate and began rifling through the folders. There were three. Eames was right; they were old. One from 1957, one from 1962, and one from 1967. He looked at the old black and white crime scene photos.

"No digital photography," he murmured.

"No DNA, not much in the way of forensics either," said Eames, as she put rice on both of their plates.

"It would be good to have access to the databases."

"Just use your secure connection. The remote password is the same as the office password." Goren smiled sheepishly.

"My internet connection sort of gradually stopped working a couple of weeks ago," he began.

"Sort of gradually stopped? Did you pay your bill?" asked Eames. Goren nodded. Eames scooped up the last of her chicken. "You eat. I'll check it out." She put down her plate and headed over to Goren's computer. "Ah, a vintage Dell."

"If you're just going to make fun – ". Eames ignored him and began clicking and typing furiously.

"Bobby, here's your problem. You have 38 Windows updates waiting to be installed."

"Is that bad?"

Eames sighed.

"Microsoft Windows has a lot of bugs. They often discover problems after the fact, and then they create little software programs that fix them. Those are the updates. You were probably missing a couple of the security patches, and your ISP – internet service provider – software got confused. It's keeping you at the Microsoft site."

"Can you fix it?"

"I'm downloading the updates now. Then they'll install themselves, but it will take a while. When Microsoft tells you that you have updates waiting, you have to let them install."

"And that won't give me viruses?"

Eames smiled. Bobby was usually so efficient about everything, but he had his blind spots. She returned to the table, where he had at least eaten what was on his plate.

"Um. I think I have some butter pecan ice cream, " he said.

"That would be great."

They ate dessert, and laughed at Eames' stories about the week in the squadroom. Goren hadn't realized how isolated he'd felt at home. Eames got up to check the computer. She did dome more typing and clicking.

"Google is once again at your fingertips, Detective."

"Thanks, Eames," he said appreciatively. She went back to the table to pick up her purse. Goren felt a slight pang of disappointment.

"Well, thanks for dinner…and the files…and fixing my computer. My, uh, one woman cavalry."

Eames ruffled his hair and smiled.

"That's me." He hobbled over to open the door for her. He watched her walk down the hall, with a feeling that he would have recognized as wistfulness, if he had been willing to admit that to himself. As he returned to his dining table, he caught sight of the folders, his new project. He happily picked them up, and seating himself on the sofa, he began to read.

**A/N The laid up detective solving a cold case it a plot device that has been used by many mystery writers, including Josephine Tey and Colin Dexter.**


	2. Chapter 2

A few days later, on Friday, Eames returned to Goren's apartment

A few days later, on Friday, Eames returned to Goren's apartment. Ostensibly, she was there to check on Goren, but in reality, she herself also needed to see a friendly face and forget her week. In addition to having to deal with their workload by themselves, she had a nagging feeling that something going on in the squadroom wasn't right. It really wasn't something she could put her finger on, just some things that didn't make sense.

Goren opened the door, and smiled. He looked better than he had earlier in the week, with that look of infectious enthusiasm on his face. He was still dressed in the same casual manner, due to all of his medical paraphernalia, but he had shaved.

Eames opened the pizza box as he got out the plates. As they sat down, she asked,

"So, have you been making any headway?"

"Well, sort of. I mean, one of the cases, the oldest one. I'm pretty sure it was suicide. A girl, maybe 23, went off of the roof of her apartment building on the West Side. It was still open because there had been a series of break-ins in the neighborhood, with the thieves escaping via the roof every time. Hers was the only death ever associated with it." He put down his pizza and wiped his hands. He went over to the desk and picked up the folder. "Look here, this interview with her roommate says that she had been attending a dance class, but she had stopped. Her roommate also said that she hadn't gone out much at all recently, so it didn't look like there was a boyfriend. On the other hand, the roommate said she was sleeping at odd hours. And here, a report from her doctor attached to the autopsy report. She didn't have a history of any medical conditions, but her doctor said that she had been to see him complaining of backaches and a lot of muscle pain. He hadn't been able to find anything wrong. See, all of those are symptoms of depression, but they didn't know that back then. And those break-ins, with no other associated violence, they stopped three weeks later. That was around the same time that Lenny "The Cat" Lowell, who had a history of breaking and entering via the roof, mostly in the Bronx, was arrested and sent to Sing Sing for breaking into a car."

"Wow. That's a lot of headway for one day."

"It's a lot easier with access to the databases and newspaper archives. But you know, that one isn't the most interesting case. The one from 1962 - "

"Bobby, I can stay a while. You can finish your pizza first if you want."

He smiled sheepishly and returned to the table. As they plowed through the second half of the pizza, Goren prodded Eames for details of the squadroom, Eames was surprisingly noncommittal. Then finally, she said, "There's a new guy."

"In Major Case?" Eames nodded. "Where's he from?"

"Well, I know he spent some time at the 27." She decided to just tell him. "I asked him about Van Buren. He didn't seem too thrilled with her."

"That's kind of odd. She's well thought of. I mean, she's no-nonsense, but most cops, you know, meat and potatoes guys, find that a relief. No politics." Eames smiled

"My brother said she reminded him of his junior high school principal."

Goren waited to see if Eames would say more. When she didn't, he decided not to push it. He went back over to the desk and opened another folder.

"This one, this one is really interesting." Eames smiled as he got into his explanatory mode. "See, Roger Walcott was a stockbroker, white shoe firm. Now he was found in City Hall Park in October of 1962. He had been shot with a Luger."

"Like from World War II?"

"That was sort of the problem. A lot of guys still had those around as war souvenirs, and none were registered. They didn't even bother trying to trace it. The investigating officers couldn't find any motive, no conflicts with anyone, happy family life."

"If it was a prominent firm, I'll bet there was a fuss. Extra justice for the rich."

"Yeah, there are a lot of interview reports, and I haven't been through all of them yet. But that's what's so interesting, you know. I mean, all that work, and nothing solid." Goren grew pensive. "I wonder if any of the witnesses are still alive?"

"After 46 years? How old was he?"

"Forty-one. So his contemporaries – "

"Would be in their late 80's. I don't know, Bobby."

"Maybe I'll get lucky. And he had a young daughter."

"She could be alive. You know, Bobby, if you need me to drive you anywhere…" Goren smiled. He had secretly hoped she would be intrigued enough to do this with him.

"That would be nice, Eames."

"I'll tell you what. I probably need to get you more groceries, anyway. I'll come by tomorrow, since it's Saturday. Maybe we can go through the file."

"O-Okay." Eames placed the empty pizza box in the garbage in the kitchen. She walked back out to the living room, and Goren rose to see her to the door. As he opened it, she turned to him.

"Bobby."

"Yeah?"

"Don't stay up until the wee hours reading the file, okay?"

"Okay." She smiled at him and walked over to the elevator. Goren closed the door. He stood for a minute, lingering by the door. Okay, he wouldn't stay up reading the file. Maybe just a little background research on the Internet. He headed over to his computer.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When Eames arrived the next morning, she was carrying a bag of groceries. When Goren opened the door, he protested,

"I would have come with you."

"Didn't the doctor say to take it easy on the leg? Although, I suppose you could have ridden in the cart." The mental image was more than Eames could handle and she burst out laughing.

"Okay, I get it," he said taking the bag from her and moving toward his kitchen..

Eames looked over in the alcove that held the cherry wood desk that had belonged to Bobby's grandfather. Printouts of newspaper archives were spread out next to the computer. Bobby had leaned a small whiteboard against one of the bookshelves. She smiled. It was a miniature version of the interview room he always commandeered. Bobby came out of the kitchen, hobbling eagerly over to the desk.

"I got his obituary for more background. He came from a wealthy family, grew up in Connecticut, went to Yale, and right after graduating in 1943, he joined up as a lieutenant in the army. He stayed in until late 1946."

"The Luger connection might have something to do with his service."

"Right. We can get more from the armed services databases, but I think I might need your help with that. After the army, he came back and joined the same firm where his uncle worked. He got married in 1953 to Anne DeMaris. They just had one daughter."

"I guess we start with the wife. What's her story?" Bobby immediately picked up another old newspaper article, announcing the debut of Miss Anne DeMaris, daughter of Cecil DeMaris, a partner in the Wall Street firm of Brooks Hampton. He handed Eames a third article, featuring the wedding announcement of Roger Walcott and Anne DeMaris, a graduate of Vassar. The couple was smiling. Walcott's father was listed as a founding partner in the legal firm of Walcott, Engle and Van Nostrand. "All this blood is looking pretty blue."

"Yeah. The officers interviewed her parents, since she was with them the night before the body was found. The case notes say they seemed well off. Large house in Westport. Apparently, there was an insurance policy, not huge." Eames drew closer to him to look over his arm at the case folder.

"200,000? That was a lot back then, but I have to think she would have done better as a stockbroker's wife for another 20 years. And if she had family money, she really wouldn't need to bump him off for the insurance. Any infidelity on either side?"

"The officers interviewed his secretary, a couple of her friends. Nothing came up."

"Hmmm," pondered Eames, skeptically, "I don't know if our 1962 counterparts would have been able to penetrate the Thin WASP Line. Unfortunately, that's exactly the sort of trail that goes cold after 40+ years. Witnesses die, forget."

"Sometimes they want to come clean," mused Goren. A thought occurred to Eames.

"His wife was younger. Is she still alive?"

"There are a couple of Anne Walcotts in the Social Security Death Index, but I need to narrow them down."

"We can use the state website. It has a lot more information." Eames plunked herself down at Goren's computer and logged into the NYPD secure site. Within minutes she had a death certificate. "It looks like heart failure, three years ago."

"How about the daughter?" Using Roger and Anne Walcott's names, she found a birth certificate for a daughter, Linda, born 1955. She then found a marriage certificate for Linda in 1980. The DMV database yielded an address on the Upper East Side. Goren was awash in admiration.

"This goes a lot faster with you around."

"Let's see if we can tackle the army," said Eames with relish. Ten minutes later, they knew that Lieutenant Roger Walcott had been with the 2nd Infantry Division, 5th Battalion.

"How big is a battalion?"

"Big," replied Goren. "It'll be hard to find out who he served with directly. Platoons and companies got shifted around a lot during the war. Try finding out who the other lieutenants in his battalion were. They probably talked."

Eames came up with ten names. Three listed New York as their state of birth. A Steven Hadley, with the right birthdate, had a driver's license on file with an address in Montauk.

"Still on the road at 88," said Eames, "I don't know whether to be inspired or terrified." She turned around to look at Goren. He was on the sofa on the phone with Linda Walcott Thompson.

"Three o'clock would be fine, Mrs. Thompson. Thank you so much for seeing us on such short notice."

"We're in?" said Eames, in disbelief. "If this is so easy, why aren't we popping these cold cases every week? Never mind. It's probably those darned new ones that keep coming in to distract us. Anyway, I think we have time for lunch."

Goren looked at his phone. It was 1:00. He hadn't realized how late it was, and he was actually pretty hungry. Eames was already in the kitchen.

"Soup and toast okay?"

"Sure." Within minutes, a fantastic aroma wafted through the apartment. "What is that?"

"I got that soup that you like from the deli counter at the market. Pasta e…"

"Pasta e fagioli?" asked Bobby, hopefully.

"That's the one." Eames ladled up two bowls, and paced a stack of buttered toast on the table. Goren rapidly ate two bowls of the hearty soup. He looked at Eames gratefully.

"Thanks again. Uh, I should change." She nodded. Goren retreated to the bedroom. When he came out, he had exchanged his t-shirt and sweats for khakis and a polo shirt. "I can change my pants because the pressure cast is removable, but shirts are, uh, still a problem."

"You're fine," said Eames, casually, figuring that casual was the best way to reassure him. "Shall we?" Goren grabbed his folder, remembered that he really couldn't write very well, but decided to take it anyway.

They took Eames' car, the Brooklyn Bridge, and FDR Drive to arrive at Linda Thompson's coop in the East 70's. The building's lobby seemed to muffle the noise of the city with its plush carpeting and uniformed staff who spoke in low tones. Mrs. Thompson had said to send them up, 15B.

Linda Thompson was in her early 50's, with a simple chin length hairstyle, a casual burgundy pantsuit that Eames recognized as a designer whose clothing can't be obtained via retail, and an antique half carat diamond ring that Goren recognized as the product of the turn of the century workshop of a Russian goldsmith who had made jewelry for the czars.

After asking them to sit down and offering them something to drink, she began,

"I must confess that I'm somewhat bewildered. Why are you looking into Dad's death after all of these years?" Goren smiled.

"Well you know, with the new technologies, computer searches, forensics, we can sometimes shed new light on older cases." Linda Thompson looked at him skeptically, but she didn't dispute his statement. Eames jumped in.

"Do you know if your father had had any problems before his death? Any arguments with anyone?"

"Not that I know of, but I'm not sure I'd have heard. You know, I was seven when he died. I remember him as a kind man who called me "Sweetheart" and took me for doughnuts every Sunday, but I probably don't need to tell people of your age that mothers really raised the children in the 50's and 60's. My mother never mentioned his arguing with anyone or any dispute. She seemed to regard his death as a random act of cruel fate."

"She never really got over his death?" asked Goren gently.

"She did miss him. Also, she never really got over the fact that her life was so different from the way she had planned. We had the insurance money, and she had a small trust from her parents. It was enough for us to live, if rather more simply than Mother had planned. She never came out and said so directly, but I know she had been expecting more from his firm than she got. He had had some equity in the firm."

"She thought maybe his partners had cheated her."

"I got that impression. But it wasn't just the money. In Mother's world, a woman got married, raised her children, did some charity work. She didn't lose her husband at a young age. When Ken and I got married, I know it was bittersweet for her. She said he would have wanted to be there."

"A family man."

"Dad was a little serious. You know, when I look at his school yearbooks, he's such a clown in those pictures, but that's not really the man I knew, or the man Mother described." She hesitated. "He was in the war, you know." Goren and Eames nodded. "He was in the invasion, and then he was in Germany. He was there when they – when they liberated the concentration camps."

They were all silent for a minute. Goren and Eames both knew that the things that they had seen had changed them. They couldn't even imagine what this man had seen. Linda Thompson got up and went over to an antique sideboard. She opened one of the drawers and removed what Goren recognized as an archival box. She removed a thick leatherbound book.

"I have his war journal. When my mother passed away three years ago, it was in the papers I inherited. Reading made me feel as if I finally knew him. It was clear how that callow youth turned into a serious young man, who was so careful of the people around him."

"Could we borrow the diary?" Goren asked gently.

"Do you really think it will help?"

"Maybe," said Goren. "Did your father have souvenirs from the war? German signs or a gun?"

"No. There were no other relics from the war in what Mother had. And I can't imagine she would have let him keep a gun in the house. There was a pile of clippings he had, articles about the war. They are there in the same box where I keep the diary."

She showed them out, Goren carefully carrying the archival box in his good arm.

"One last thing," said Goren. "Do you know who your mother dealt with at your father's firm, after he died?"

"Anyone who was there when Dad was is either dead or retired. The managing partner at the firm is Jed Bromley. I know him a little. His wife and I both work on the MOMA's annual gala."

"They say," said Eames, as they got into the car, "that only 10 percent of the iceberg is above the surface."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Eames and Goren returned to Goren's apartment. They both looked at the kitchen and then at each other.

"I'm thinking potstickers and mooshoo vegetables," said Eames.

"Second," said Goren.

"Motion carried."

When their meal was over and all of the white cartons safely stowed in Goren's refrigerator, they both looked over at the box on his desk. Goren limped over and took the diary out of the box. Eames had seated herself on the sofa, and he sort of fell onto the sofa beside her. He began to read aloud.

June 10, 1944.

This has been my first chance to write since the invasion. I'm surprised I remember how to write. Whatever I say simply will not be able to capture what I have seen. The blood, the bodies. Half of my company, including my sergeant, are dead. I have been given five more men from Gelhart's company. He died on Omaha. I had just had dinner with him the night before, and now I will never speak to him again. I had to step over Gelhart's body to get to our firing position. By nightfall, it seemed normal to step over the bodies of people I know, or knew, I guess.

July 15, 1944. We stopped in a small town tonight. I must remember to thank Nana for making me take French at Choate. It is always hard to find fresh food, but I am usually able to barter with the townspeople or people in farmhouses. Tonight, as we camped, I could hear a young woman singing in the local restaurant. Most of the men in the village ran away to join the Resistance, and no one knows whether they were alive or not. The Germans took much of the food with them when they fled. The children have no shoes. But this young woman was singing so happily.

August 22, 1944

At last, we reach Paris. We took back several blocks on the outskirts, or what was left of several blocks. We just surrounded each building in turn. Every third one or so had some Germans in it. My men acquitted themselves well. They just keep doing what I ask them to do. I'm not sure what I've done to deserve this kind of loyalty. In college, I liked my roommates well enough, but if someone liked the other's girl, he didn't hold back on trying to woo her away. Somehow, these people are better than the ones I knew.

Goren stopped. They were silent for a moment. No wonder this man had been changed.

"I, uh, I sometimes feel that way about you, the Captain, Logan."

"That we'll take your girl?"

"That you're better people. Better than the ones I knew before, and better than the ones around us."

"You probably don't know what you've done to deserve this kind of loyalty either."

Goren was quiet again. He was wiped out. He put the diary on his coffee table and leaned back against the sofa.

"I guess I don't. I'm not easy."

"No," she said, reaching up to stroke his hair, "you get loyalty because you give it. Not complicated." His eyes began to close. Eames picked up her purse to go. She hesitated, and then leaned down to kiss his cheek, before walking out the door.

The next day, Eames and her sister Christina had promised to take their parents to lunch, so Goren was on his own. He read more of the diary. It read like a history of the last year of the war. The Battle of the Bulge had lasted so long. Walcott sounded more discouraged, lost more men. Finally, the Allies broke through. Goren could hear the relief in Walcott's writing.

Eames pulled into her driveway on Sunday evening. She sighed. Her day yesterday with Bobby had been such a relief, like having him back in the office again, and her day with her family today had been so restful. She wasn't looking forward to going back to the office the next day. What she hadn't told Bobby about the new guy was that, in addition to not liking Van Buren, he was also giving Eames the eye, and not in a respectful way. She didn't worry about being able to handle him, but the fact that she had to made her weary. She realized that she was having one of those days when being single seemed to be a gigantic liability, and she made a conscious effort not to fade into self pity. She did, however, dig into the Ben and Jerry's. To fortify myself for the battle ahead, she thought.

The next morning, Eames went in a little early. When the new guy came in, he lingered pointedly at her desk.

"Hey, Eames," he said, giving her the kind of leer that one would ordinarily expect from the guy sitting on the back of the bus to middle school. "Exciting weekend?" She didn't look up.

"Very relaxing, thank you, Barrett."

"Not so much action, huh? I –" Eames got up in the middle of his sentence and headed to the Captain's office for a signature. Step 1, she thought.

Step 2 required her to loiter around the Captain's office until she got the information she needed. It came at 10:45.

"Barrett," said Ross, "your requalifying drill at the range is at 15:00."

Eames walked into the ladies room and on her cellphone, she scheduled herself a time slot at the firing range at 3:15. When she came out, she noticed the sergeant from the Property Room at Barrett's desk. He had also been there twice on Friday and once on Thursday. This was one of the things that had nagged at Eames. She couldn't quite put her finger on why it bothered her, but why did these guys know each other?

Eames spent the next few hours typing up witness statements. At 2:55, she went over to the firing range. She noted where Barrett was standing with the range inspector and positioned her self two firing lanes away. She fired two full clips. Fate was on her side, and Barrett walked by her and stopped, just as her target was sailing toward her with ten holes in its little paper heart. He swallowed involuntarily when he saw her target. Eames suppressed a smile. From her brief view of his shooting, he didn't seem to have anything like her proficiency. Not that she felt that her marksmanship was some kind of virtue; while she did work at it, other people put in as much time as she did without ever obtaining her good results. It was something she had a knack for, and she had beaten her brothers at darts all during her childhood.

"That's some shooting there, Eames. Of course," Barrett said with a swagger, "it really is pretty controlled in here. I mean, not like you've taken some perp down on the streets is it?"

Eames didn't look up as she reloaded. She had hoped he wouldn't ask that question, but it probably served her purpose.

"Actually, I have." More involuntary swallowing by Barrett.

Step 2, thought Eames

"Your partner, is he a good shot?"

"A fair one," she said.

"Your partner is out a lot."

"Goren's recovering from wounds he got chasing a perp."

"You're partners with Goren?

Eames hadn't expected Step 3 to come so quickly.

"Seven years and counting."

"I hear he's weird."

"Weird gets us a decent case clearance rate, so I'll take weird. He's also always got my back."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He's like a pit bull when I'm in danger." Eames then underscored her sentence by emptying another clip into the heart of a paper target. When she looked up, Barrett was gone. Yep, the lack of interest, the intimidatingly good shooting skills, and the unstable protective partner. The trifecta had done the job. Any one of them on its own might not have been sufficient to get rid of him, but together, their effects were exponentially magnified.

She left the range with an air of satisfaction.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Goren's Monday was also challenging if not as blatantly unpleasant. He kept running into dead ends. The fundamental problem with working a cold case was that so many of the databases that they usually used didn't go back far enough. He couldn't search for other deaths involving a Luger in the early 60's, since many cases from that era hadn't been put in the system. He couldn't find a probate record for Walcott's will. The Times archives had nothing. The Times of yore might have ignored a sordid, garden variety murder.

Goren rubbed his face in frustration and got up from his computer. He peered into the refrigerator hopefully. In Saturday's bag of groceries, Eames had brought him a wrapped white package, and perhaps it was…yes, pastrami! She had also attached a Post-It note to the package that said "For Emergencies Only!" He hesitated, but really, this was an emergency.

As he wiped the mustard off of his face, he ruefully thought about his father, or the man he had believed to be his father, the man who had introduced him to pastrami. A man who lived for pleasure, Goren Sr. Goren then realized his next move. Thank God for emergency pastrami.

For the most part, John Eames enjoyed his retirement. He had a slew of grandchildren, each with soccer games and ballet recitals. He was always working on at least one car. His wife enjoyed having him home, and frankly, she needed him there. Yet, there were days when he grew restless, needed something more. It was this restlessness that had driven him to the post-retirement job with the city that had landed him in all of that accounting hot water, so he had learned to stifle it. He still missed the thrill of the chase, though, and Bobby Goren's phone call was entirely welcome.

"A murder with a Luger? In 60's Manhattan? You know I worked Midtown in those years, and I do remember one. I was pretty green, and it wasn't my case, but the older guys were talking about it. They said they'd seen a few of those in the 40's and 50's, what with guys bringing them home as war souvenirs. And you know how that goes, Bobby. They think they're keeping a gun in the house for protection, but then there's an argument – family member, poker game, whatever, and blam. Crying shame.

Anyway, it wasn't your blueblood. It was a regular guy. Some kind of engineer or mechanic. The guy who caught the case, Pete Saunders, he's still around. At least, he was at the last Benevolent Association Gala. Lives with a daughter in Flushing. I'll call him."

"Thanks, Sargent Eames."

"Bobby, when are you going to call me Johnny, like everyone else?"

Never, thought Bobby, as he hung up the phone. Since he couldn't go much further on the random angle of the case, he decided to go back to the other end, the firm, and hoped that the lines of investigation would meet in the middle.

Walcott's firm, Delwich Brothers, had certainly been doing well lately. Goren might have Josh in Accounting take a look at their records, but their SEC filings recently seemed to indicate a firm somehow in the pink of health.

"Guess they passed on those mortgage-backed securities," muttered Goren. The filings online only went back to the 80's, so he checked The Times' archives. Nothing but good news going back to the 1970's, when the company had made a killing by holding oil stocks. He couldn't find many references to the firm before that. "Maybe the widow was right, and they short-changed her."

Goren pondered his next move. If he contacted this Jed Bromley, the new managing partner, he would tip him off. Jed was of course not involved in a 46 year old murder. There were, however, enough Bromleys in those articles he had read about the firm's history to make Goren think that Jed might have a vested interest in protecting their reputation, and would not be above sacrificing the reputation of a few Walcotts in order to do so. If he asked Josh to get the records from the 60's, that would take forever, Ross might not allow it, and he had no idea how complete those records would be. He would approach Bromley from another angle, make it sound as though the widow was in the wrong. He phoned Jed Bromley's office, got a secretary with a liquid voice who tried to discourage him, until he mentioned the words "police investigation," at which point she became quite flustered. He made a point of indicating that it was Mrs. Walcott's estate he was investigating. He got an appointment with Bromley for the next day.

The phone call that came in at 2:30 told him that John Eames had found Pete Saunders, who had looked up some old case notes. In fact, since John knew that Bobby was laid up, he would bring Saunders over to see Bobby himself. No trouble. The phone call at 2:45 told him that they were downstairs. These guys weren't the types to let grass grow under their feet, thought Bobby admiringly.

Pete Saunders, aged 80, wore glasses with coke bottle lenses, which explained why John Eames had had to pick him up, and why he looked so happy to be out of Flushing for the day. Yet, he was very businesslike.

"So the Luger murder. It was in March of 1962. The victim, Josef Gruenwald, designed and built machinery for factories in the Garment District. His body was found in an alley near his apartment in Midtown. No witnesses. We never found the gun."

"Any suspects? Anyone have a beef with him?"

"That was just it. He kept himself to himself. None of the neighbors knew him well. They knew that he was a refugee from Germany who had come here after the war, and there was a rumor that he had been a victim of the Nazis, but no one really knew the whole scoop."

"No family?"

"Not that we could find."

"Were there any others that year?"

"Not that I heard about, but you know, we didn't have all of these computers back then. You kind of hoped that the brass in each precinct kept the others up to date…"

"But brass being brass…" said Johnny.

"That much hasn't changed," said Goren.

Saunders and Eames, Sr. gratefully accepted coffee and stayed to shoot the breeze a while. Goren had been feeling isolated by himself, outside of the hum of the squadroom, and he really enjoyed their stories of the old days, even if he knew that a therapized Baby Boomer like himself could never have functioned in that time. He just saw too much gray wherever he looked. Goren did wonder, though, if he was glimpsing his future in Saunders. Retired, too much time on his hands, waiting for the younger guys to call and ask for his help, which they seldom did. He'd much rather take John Eames' future, but he didn't know how to get there from his current position.

She called him that night rather than stopping by. She had some house chores to take care of, and she was afraid he would see the day's incidents all over her face.

"So Dad said you called him?"

Goren animatedly updated her on the day's developments. Eames was glad they had some scraps of information, but was even more grateful that her father had been able to help her partner, and vice versa.

"Sounds promising, Bobby. Don't overdo it though."

They said goodnight.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

On Tuesday morning, Goren had awoken with fresh enthusiasm for the investigation, since Pete and John had given him such promising information. By 10:30, his enthusiasm was waning. Josef Gruenwald was an enigma, or maybe a non-entity, not significant enough to receive the kind of notice that makes a person show up in a database more than forty years after his or her death.

There were some archives of smaller newspapers, he knew, but they weren't available electronically. He'd have to go to look at archived copies in the library. Now that Pete had given him dates to work with, that kind of thing would be much easier. Goren looked down at his leg. Well, maybe not as easy as it needed to be. He could use the library at NYU; he knew several of the librarians there. He had to go to lower Manhattan to meet Jed Bromley at 3:00 anyway.. The part he really hadn't thought through was how he would get there. A car service from his place in Bay Ridge all the way to Greenwich Village was a lot more than he wanted to spend right now.

Thirty minutes later, Bobby stood dressed on the sidewalk outside his building. Ralph, a guy down the block, drove a cab that was off the books, off the books because he could never have afforded a New York City taxi medallion. Ralph mostly drove elderly ladies to the doctor, and didn't really compete with the big fleets downtown. He had gotten cited once, and had called Bobby, who had pointed out to the patrolman that some of these small businesses may be off the books, but they help the neighborhood function. Bobby had called in the favor, and Ralph's Camry pulled up to the curb.

Ralph deposited him at the subway. Bobby limped into the station. These transitions were the hard part, he told himself. On the subway, in the library, and at Bromley's office, he'd be mostly sitting down, he rationalized.

He didn't have to change trains, but he did need a cab to deposit him at the door to the NYU Serial Archives. Once inside, he spotted Evelyn, the head reference librarian.

"Why Detective Goren, it's so nice to see you. Oh my, were you injured in the line of duty?" He explained that he had been, and that was it. Evelyn's maternal impulses kicked in. She saw him over to a microfilm reader, supplied him with a card for the microfilm copier, and summoned a helpful work study student to fetch his microfilm for him. After the student had gotten him a month's worth of the newspaper he wanted, he gave her ten dollars and his best bashful look and asked her to get him an obscure flavor of Clif Bar from the student store and something for herself. She ran off, and Goren was alone at last.

He had always loved libraries, and the microfilm room in the newspaper archives was no exception. It was usually dimly lit to allow people to read the microfilm, which was backlit, and the ceilings were low, as it was in a basement. He felt very comfortable there in the womblike setting. He also never felt scrutinized the way he did in the squadroom. Everyone in there was just doing what he was doing: trying to find some obscure fact buried in the past.

It took him a while to go through the microfilm, as he had to do a lot of things with the wrong hand. He wondered, for the thousandth time, how these right-handed people managed to go about their daily lives. After looking at three weeks worth of issues of the Jewish Daily Forward from 1962, he found the item he was looking for.

Josef Gruenwald, industrial engineer, in Manhattan, March 15, 1962. He was born in Weimar, Germany on October 26, 1915, and graduated from the Bundesteknikal in 1936. He was imprisoned in the Mittelbau Dora labor camp during the war. He emigrated to the US in 1946, and had been employed by Machine Works Corp. since 1949.

So he had been a victim of the Nazis. Who had known enough about him to place this obituary, wondered Goren. Perhaps his firm had placed it. They would probably have known his history. No dependents, relatives, or family members were listed. He had probably lost everyone in the war, and afterwards…He wouldn't have been the first man whose hope had been extinguished forever by loss.

Bobby's student returned with his Clif Bar as he was packing up to go. He added a hot dog from a cart and ate on a small bench. Looking at his watch, he decided to head over to Jed Bromley's office. His leg was aching, so he hailed a cab and headed for the Financial District.

Jed Bromley's office was not what he expected. He had pegged an old firm for a traditional décor, but Delwich Brothers had an open plan, with a sea of desks, state of the art flat screen monitors. halogen lighting, and a cappuccino bar at one end of the room. Jed Bromley's office was separate, but the walls were all glass. Goren wondered idly whether it was so Bromley could keep an eye on his staff or vice versa, sort of a lead by example strategy.

"Ah, Detective," said Bromley, smiling broadly and extending the firm handshake he had learned in prep school. "I'm afraid I only have 20 minutes for you, but I can give you Aubrey, our archivist."

"I appreciate whatever time you can give me, Mr. Bromley." Goren seated himself on the uncomfortable guest chair that was strategically lower than Bromley's own seat.

"Well, your synopsis over the phone was very intriguing. It's about Roger Walcott. Of course, that was substantially before my time, but everyone has heard of Roger, since the murder of a principal was quite a scandal in its time."

"We were looking at his widow's estate," Goren began slowly, hoping the other man would pick up the slack. "In some of her papers, she seems to indicate that she was owed more by your firm."

"Hmmm. Well, in 1962, the firm wasn't quite as valuable as it is today in real terms. We really didn't take off until the 70's, when we were well placed in oil."

Goren surreptitiously glanced around the office. On side table, there was a collection of photographs. The central one was a picture of a younger Jed Bromley in a cap and gown, standing next to an older man, who had his arm around Jed's shoulders. So a positive relationship with the father, then

"The oil, was that your father's idea?"

"Yes," said Jed smiling broadly, "he had quite the nose for a trend. Mind you, he gave a lot of the credit to Walcott. Roger was a bit older than my father, and Dad regarded him as a mentor. He said Roger had a real head for finding tomorrow's products, and it looked for a while as if he were really going to pull it off. Roger was going to take positions in companies that made plastics and jet fuel."

"But he didn't?"

"I guess not. Dad was never sure why. Perhaps he died before he could. Anyway, I suppose that might be why his wife thought the firm was worth more than it was. Maybe at home, Roger represented his proposed actions as a certainty. And now, Detective, I'll need to get back to my dailies." He picked up his phone. "Aubrey, we're ready for you now."

Aubrey, a young woman in a grey wool suit, barely distinguishable from the other young women in the office in grey wool suits, flowed in and led Goren out into the hallway.

"Mr. Bromley said that you might want to look at some of the older documents, and know about the history of the firm."

"I'm really interested in what Walcott was researching."

"Mr. Walcott's papers and correspondence are all stored in our archives room, but I have catalogued quite a few of it." Aubrey led Goren down a corridor. She started down a flight of stairs. Goren looked at his throbbing leg, sighed, and followed her down.

After an hour in an over-air conditioned room, Goren had a list of the firms that Walcott had ordered research on in 1962, some of the preliminary research, and copies of much of his correspondence from that time. He also had had a difficult trip up the stairs, and his leg really hurt, in addition to not feeling quite right.

When he stepped outside the office building, Goren was increasingly less sure of his ability to navigate the subway home. Desperate times called for desperate measures. When he saw a cruiser driving by, he flashed his shield.

"Are you guys stopping by One Police Plaza anytime soon?"


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Eames hung up the phone at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday. Her brother still had friends at the Two Seven from his temporary detail there, and one of them was Anita Van Buren's PAA. Thanking God for her brother's irreverent charm, Eames wrote down the time and courtroom number of Van Buren's appointment. At 1:00, gathering every form from every case on her desk that any ADA might need to see under any set of circumstances, she signed herself out to the courthouse.

Eames timed things well, and after paying the ADA a perfunctory visit, she ran into Van Buren.

"Detective…Eames, isn't it, from Major Case?"

"That's right, Lieutenant. How are things at the Two Seven?"

"I can't complain. The budget cuts don't help, but they're no worse for me than anybody else."

"We recently had someone transfer in who spent some time in your squad: Ollie Barrett."

"Barrett? Now how did HE end up in Major Case?"

"I'm not really sure."

Van Buren regarded Eames intently.

"Detective, why don't you and I get a cup of coffee and catch up. You know, I haven't told you about my son's high school science fair – and there was an explosion."

"I'd like that a lot."

As they walked out of the courthouse, Lt. Van Buren did indeed have a story about her son's science fair, an errant rocket, a fetal pig, and two very expensive purebred mice borrowed from Cornell Medical School. When they were out of sight of the courthouse, Van Buren pointed to a Starbucks nearby. They settled down at a table with a couple of Café Americanos. Van Buren eyed Eames' sugar dispensing warily.

"Detective, I'm thinking that my running into you today wasn't an accident, and I think it was wise of you to choose neutral ground."

Eames now understood why this woman was in charge of detectives. They just had to outsmart the crooks. She had to outsmart the people who could outsmart the crooks.

"I don't have anything concrete, you understand, Lieutenant. It's just a lot of little things that don't add up."

"You've just summed up my initial experience with Detective Barrett. Things eventually got worse, but I'm still not sure what his story is. He came in about eight months ago. There was nothing untoward in his personnel file. At first things seemed to go smoothly, but his paperwork was sloppy. It was mostly the evidence sheets and the property sheets. He would turn in a file, and they'd be missing, I'd get on him, and eventually they would turn up, backdated. I didn't think much of it to begin with; a lot of good officers just aren't good with paperwork. Then a suspect that Barrett brought in and processed claims that his watch is missing, and it was a family heirloom."

"What did Barrett say?"

"He didn't remember any watch, and his partner backed him. The suspect didn't push it any further, so I didn't pursue it. I don't need to tell you, perps say a lot of things. In hindsight, the suspect was in a lot of hot water, though, and he might have thought it was in his best interest to keep quiet. At any rate, the next incident was the doozy. A prostitute accused him of asking for a freebie while on duty in exchange for not arresting her. Again, perps say a lot of things – "

"I worked Vice for several years," said Eames.

"So I don't need to tell you. But now, it seemed to me that that was a lot of smoke for there not to be a fire. Now, my opinion didn't matter officially; a complaint like that goes to IAB, and we handled it by the book. In the meantime though, I wanted to know whether I had a bad apple, or a guy with a bad luck streak. I started asking around, and nobody would give me any specifics. He had left Narcotics before coming to us, and he left under some kind of cloud, but to this day, I have no idea what the particulars were. The complaint came back from IAB pretty quickly, and he was cleared. I was uncomfortable with having him in my house, and I was thinking of trying to have him transferred out quietly, when he announced that he was leaving, and he had a better opportunity elsewhere."

"When was this?" asked Eames.

"About two months ago. What's your beef with him?"

"Well, like I said, nothing really substantial. The big tipoff was his complaint about you."

"Probably trying to pre-empt me if someone calls for a reference."

"He's also been looking at me like I'm the blue plate special. I think I've addressed that issue." This caused Van Buren to smile knowingly. There was a certain skill set that the boys never had to learn. "But the thing I can't figure out is, how does he know the 1PP Property sergeant? I haven't been able to find a record of his ever having been stationed there. The two of them are together a lot."

Van Buren shook her head.

"I don't know what to tell you, Detective, other than to keep your eyes open and watch your back. It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with no picture. I'll put together the documentation for what happened on my end. Maybe you'll find out enough that will enable us to cobble things together, or at least justify the use of some manpower."

Eames thanked the Lieutenant and returned to 1PP, hoping that the length of her absence hadn't been noticed. She went up to the 11th floor and gathered her things to head home.

She took the elevator down to the parking garage. She had gotten a good spot that morning. When she arrived at her car, there was a familiar figure sitting on the retaining wall next to it.

"Bobby! What are you doing here? Are you crazy, walking on that leg?" Eames instantly regretted her outburst. It was not for her to lecture him. He was an adult, and it wasn't as if her were her boyfriend or something. She also usually tried not to use the word "crazy" around him. He was apparently, however, asking for a ride, which she supposed gave her some license.

Goren nodded his head. He had been expecting her to scold him. She was right. It had been foolish to be out and about all day, and his leg was letting him know. Eames decided to change tactics.

"It's bothering you, isn't it. Have you looked at the leg?" Goren leaned down to roll up his pant leg. His leg was rather swollen. "Okay, hop in, but," she said unlocking the doors, "you should sit in the back and keep your leg elevated." Goren didn't object, and they set off for Brooklyn.

On the way, he recounted his adventures of the day. Eames was intrigued, but first things first. She followed him into his apartment, and moved immediately into the kitchen. "I'm thinking pasta," she said decisively.

"I can do that."

"Bobby," she said quietly, "I think the sensible thing for you to do is stay off of the leg." She walked back out into the living room. "Do you want some Advil?" Goren looked at her intently for a moment and then sat heavily on the sofa. He decided to let the stoicism have the night off. He turned to prop his leg up on the sofa.

"Yeah, thanks." Eames disappeared into the bathroom, and emerged with a couple of tablets and a glass of water. "Thanks," he said, as he took them. She patted his shoulder and went back out to the kitchen. As she boiled the pasta and heated sauce, Eames felt a twinge of guilt. She had yelled at him for being irresponsible. He had not told her of his jaunt ahead of time, because she knew he wouldn't approve. Now, she was keeping something from him. She waited until they had finished eating, which they did at the coffee table to allow Goren to keep his leg up.

"The new guy has been acting kind of weirdly."

"Weirdly how?" Goren asked.

"Well, besides the complaint about Van Buren, he's been oddly chummy with our favorite sergeant down in Property. They act like old buddies."

"Do they know each other from another tour of duty somewhere?"

"The Property guy has been there forever, and Barrett's never been in the same building. So I went to see Van Buren…" She recounted the substance of her conversation with Lieutenant Van Buren. Goren sat up straighter. He really didn't like the idea of Eames alone in the squadroom with someone who might be dirty. Hold on, he thought, she's not alone, she's surrounded by trained professionals, and she's an adult. What was bothering him was that he wasn't there. There was something else too. She wasn't giving him the whole story.

"Alex, " he said quietly, "there's something else, isn't there? I don't think you would have gone to Van Buren without more."

Eames had been afraid that he would figure that out, but in a way, it was a relief to be telling him. She didn't like tackling a problem without him, and she knew he only did his best with all the information he could get. If she also worried that he might react badly to what she was about to say, she didn't admit to herself that it could be out of jealousy.

"He, uh, was showing an inappropriate interest. In a way that would have gotten him kicked out of a lot of squads, not assigned to Major Case."

Goren felt irrationally angry. He didn't bother telling himself it was because of Barrett's lack of professionalism.

"An inappropriate interest in you."

"Yeah," said Eames hurriedly, "but I took care of it."

"You took care of it?"

"I let him see me at the firing range." Goren smiled. His reaction on first seeing Eames shoot had been that he was glad she was on his side. "I might also have intimated that my partner was slightly unstable. So thanks for being quirky."

"You know me," he said, "always glad to help." He smiled wanly. Goren was glad of his injuries just now, since they prevented him from walking to his car, driving to wherever Barrett lived, and punching him until he cried like a schoolgirl.

Eames smiled. That had gone more easily than she had thought. She felt a twinge of something like disappointment.

"I, uh, I do want you to be careful with this guy. Maybe I should come back in, at least make an appearance..."

"After your performance today? Do you really think that's a good idea?"

"Maybe not." He leaned his head back on the couch. She looked at him with concern.

"You can take one more pill, but no beer tonight. They don't mix." She got him another Advil and some water.

"Maybe you should get some sleep." He nodded. She followed him into the bedroom and turned down the bed.

"Eames, you don't have to…"

"It's okay, Bobby." He sat on the bed. She helped him remove the leg brace, and handed him some pajamas. While he was changing, she got some water and the bottle of Advil and placed it by the bed. "Just in case," she said. He lay down on the bed, heavy with exhaustion. Eames pulled the covers over him. She kissed him on the cheek. Goodnight, Bobby." As he sank into a deep sleep, his last thought was an idle wondering about the last time someone had tucked him into bed.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

When Goren woke up the next morning, his leg felt better. He lifted the sheets to look down. A lot less swelling. He tried pulling the sheets farther over himself, but they seemed to be stuck. He looked over. Eames was asleep next to him. Goren experienced a moment of what felt like contentment, but then his superego took over. It must be tiring, he thought, putting in a full day, and then having to deal with me. And then there was this Barrett guy, who was taking up way more of her time than he should. He reached over and touched her cheek briefly. Eames stirred. He pulled his hand back. He looked at the clock. He probably should wake her. As it was, she probably wouldn't have time to go all the way home and still make it in.

Eames awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. She opened her eyes and wondered if the Maxwell House people were filming in her kitchen, and then she realized she was still dressed, and in Bobby's room.

"Wow, " she said, almost sheepishly, as she wandered into the kitchen, "I was clearly more tired than I thought. Sorry, Goren. I don't usually treat my friends' houses like the YMCA Campground."

Goren got up from the dining table, where he'd had his leg propped up on a second chair. He handed her a cup of coffee.

"There's, uh, no need to apologize after I basically arm-twisted you into providing nursing care."

"In that case, I thank you for your hospitality. I'm going to pop out to the car. I have a presentable spare shirt in my gym bag."

"I, uh, left you a towel on the sink."

As Eames showered and dressed, she was still a little chagrined. A competent woman of the new millennium exercised more control over where she woke up in the morning. Of course, this was Bobby, whom she trusted more than anyone else. She was actually surprised by how right this felt, seeing him last thing at night, first thing in the morning. This feeling was reinforced by the plate of eggs and toast he handed her when she walked into the kitchen..

As she headed out to her car, she said,

"Off the leg today."

"And you keep an eye out for Barrett." They nodded agreement.

True to his word, Bobby spent the next couple of days in a seated position, which wasn't hard, since he had so much material to go through. He started with the rest of Walcott's diary.

April 21, 1945. Buchenwald, Germany

I had not thought it possible to be more horrified than I was the day of the invasion. That was bloody and fast. What I have seen in these last days was cruelty beyond my imaginings. We liberated what looked like a prisoner of war camp from the outside. It turned out to be a camp where Jewish prisoners were held. The worst part was what the camp was for – killing.

Goren read through more entries like this, his stomach turning as Walcott detailed what he saw.

In July of 1945, with victory declared, Walcott had been transferred to the Occupying Forces in Berlin. He was in the Communications Office, and the tone of his entries improved, although Goren noted that it never again became lighthearted.

August 12, 1945

These last three weeks, I've mostly been writing directives about our economic programs: how to obtain rations, what kinds of activities are permitted. Our translator then puts them into German. I like the work. I'm finding that I like trying to figure out what consumers are going to do.

September 15th, 1945

I've been asked to give some classes on life in the US to a group of Germans. They are mostly families – husbands, wives, teenaged children. They all speak some English, and they seem well-educated. I don't know why they are so interested in life in the US.

September 28, 1945

I struck up a conversation with a young woman in my class. She is about twenty, and she takes the class with her parents, a middle aged couple. She says that they are going to the US, because her father will work there. I find the whole thing very peculiar. Why are we having German citizens come to the US to work? The US has been clear that we are going to try to rebuild Europe, so why don't they stay here?

Goren spent much of Wednesday poring over the diary, and tried not to think about Eames in the office with the leering Barrett. He purposely refrained from calling her, telling himself that she didn't need him bothering her. If he could make it through today without calling, he probably wouldn't feel as intense a need to call her the rest of the week.

Thursday morning, he started in on the material he had received from Aubrey at Walcott's old firm. Clearly, Walcott hadn't taken the matter of buying stocks in those firms lightly, and he had wanted to do a lot of research before committing his company's money to such new fields. He had started researching the plastics firms and the jet fuel manufacturers in 1961. One firm, Technautics, seem to have filed promising patents in both areas. There were copies of the patents, technical specifications, and annual reports. Goren stared at the glossy pictures of the CEOs and scientists, middle aged white men in square black glasses and white button down shirts. They reminded him a bit of his grandfather.

Goren looked over the balance sheets. They looked okay to him, but that wasn't really his area. Maybe this was a task for Josh. Walcott hadn't marked or circled anything on the balance sheets. He had written questions in the margins of the patents, and there were notes all over the sections of the annual reports that dealt with marketing.

Goren looked at the clock. 11:00 a.m. His theory that it would be easier to refrain from calling Eames turned out to be completely false. At noon, he couldn't hold back any longer. Eames answered after several rings.

"You almost missed me. I was heading out for tuna salad."

"So, ah, how are things?"

"Bobby are you that bored? I thought your case was keeping you occupied."

Goren decided to go with boredom.

"Yeah, but one case can't stay interesting all day."

"Bobby, I've seen you pull 40 hour shifts when you sink your teeth into something."

Boredom was not holding up as a plausible reason for calling. Goren changed the subject.

"So, any sign of the Property guy?"

Aha, thought Eames, Goren was concerned about the Barrett issue.

"He's been up here every day this week. Barrett has also been disappearing without signing himself out anywhere.

"So you're keeping an eye on him?"

"Yeah, but don't worry, I don't think he knows."

Goren was worried that Barrett might get the wrong idea from Eames' surveillance of hm, but he didn't really think it was a good idea to bring that up just now. They said good-bye with a promise to get together the next night.

Goren continued going through Walcott's papers. He was almost ready to move on to the business correspondence. The thought of Barrett ate at him. Could it hurt to switch gears for a little while?

Eames had said that Barrett had worked Narcotics. Goren still had a few friends there. He made a call to his friend, Roman Gandy. The reaction he got to Barrett's name was expected, but every answer opened up more questions.

"Jesus! Barrett's in your house? He has more juice than I thought."

"What's his story?"

"So everyone heard he was dirty. The details got hushed up, so we didn't really know how dirty. Popular theories were that he was shaking down low level street guys, reselling seizures, or both. What we did know for sure was that they caught him because one of those low level street guys got hurt, and he was involved indirectly somehow."

"So why is he still with us?"

"Like I said, he's got juice. He used to brag about knowing one of the top brass better than his own mother knew him. We all thought it was just talk at the time, but later, what with all that happened, it seemed like the real deal. So watch your back."

"What was his territory, by the way?"

"Washington Square Park, The Village, that area."

Goren thanked Gandy and hung up. This was worse than Goren had imagined.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

On Friday morning, Eames decided that it was time to take some investigative action. She had to be careful, especially since she didn't want to undo her efforts at the firing range. She made sure that one of her forms that morning was a request for the physical evidence on an old case. Which one to pick? Definitely not Tagman. Wally Stevens was simply too much paper. She decided to go with Dorian Cavanaugh. As long as she specified that she didn't want the box, she could handle a few carbon monoxide canisters.

When Barrett left, Eames gave him 15 minutes. Then she headed down to Property. She walked down the last hallway quietly. She could hear Barrett's voice.

"These guys pay ten cents on the dollar. That's what I'm getting, so that's what you're getting." She allowed her footsteps to grow louder as she approached the Property Desk

The sergeant popped his head out from behind a set of shelves as Eames walked up to the window, form in hand.

"Ah, what can I do for you, Detective, um, Eames, is it?

"Just need to look over evidence for an old case. An appeal might be coming up."

Barrett didn't show himself, which meant that he minded whether she knew he was there, which meant that she needed to watch her step, not revealing that she knew anything about his visits here. As she carried her cardboard box of Carlotta Francis costumes, she resolved to not even look in Barrett's direction for the rest of the day.

When Eames arrived at Goren's that night, she carried shish kebab and falafel to a fairly somber Goren. He wouldn't eat until he had explained what Roman had told him to Eames. He had felt guilty about not updating her immediately. When she told him of the events of the day, he couldn't contain his anger. .

"Eames, you can't go skulking around this guy without back-up like that!"

"I can't?" said Eames with an edge to her voice. "I must have missed the memo about your promotion to Captain." Goren realized his mistake.

"I'm sorry, Eames. I – I'm just made at myself for not calling you immediately when I heard from Roman." Eames paused.

"Well, clearly, we now have a second case, and we'll need to watch our step if he has friends in high places." The both paused a minute, simultaneously thinking about what had happened to their former captain.

"I just, I don't know that you should be doing more surveillance." He paused, waiting for her wrath.

"Believe it or not, I'm actually going to agree with you here. I think if I conveniently show up in any more places where he happens to be, he's going to make me. I'm going to go back as far as I can into his early career. If I can find out who he's got his hooks into, we might be able to tackle this from the opposite direction. " Goren nodded. "Speaking of our first case, how's that going?" Goren recounted what he'd learned, and he read some of the diary entries to her. "Bobby, I can tell by the tone in your voice that you're onto something." He nodded.

"Those classes. I think he's talking about Operation Paper Clip, or some people called it Operation Barbarossa. It was, uh, a program that brought German scientists to the US to work on things like rocketry. The idea was to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Soviets, and to hasten the development of the nuclear program here."

"Let me guess. The US government didn't ask too many questions about what their beliefs were or what the scientists were doing during the war."

"There were some real bad apples, and some people whose actions were questionable."

"But how does teaching those classes fit into his life all those years later? And how about Josef Gruenwald?"

"I think it might have something to do with the industries he was researching for his firm's investments. They were plastics and jet fuel. There were a lot of companies. But Gruenwald? I still haven't figured that out. But then -"

"What?"

"I'm not sure she's really involved, but we have to at least consider the widow. If she expected the firm to be worth much more, her motive is…enhanced"

"A debutante packing heat. No you're right. We have to consider it." Alex looked over at Bobby's desk. He had begun taping sheets to his white board, but it looked as if he still had a lot to go through. "What say I come over tomorrow, and we get these documents organized?" Goren smiled gratefully.

The next day, Eames arrived with a cork board and some cantaloupe. They spent the morning tacking documents up, recording information from them, and placing like with like. Goren was grateful that Eames was there to do some of the legwork. He wasn't sure his leg was up to the repeated getting up and sitting down that he usually did when organizing a casefile. When their pizza arrived, Eames finished first and she sat down idly at Bobby's desk. Her gaze fell on the archival box that held Walcott's documents.

"Bobby, we haven't been through these, have we?" Goren silently cursed.

"No, I was so caught up in the diary…"

Eames opened the box and began poking around. She started making piles.

"His high school and college diplomas. A certificate from the Rotary Club for attendance for the year 1960. Several birthday cards. There are a few letters. This one is 1959. It's from his grandmother. There are some carbons," she paused. "They are carbons of things he sent. A couple of them look like requests for those reports you have, you know, the ones from the companies. Wait, Bobby –" Eames held aloft a thin piece of paper covered with blue scrawl. "This one is handwritten, and it's addressed to Josef Gruenwald! It says 'My Dear Sir, I am writing to inquire about the Letter to the Editor you wrote that was printed in the Jewish Daily Forward on February 21, 1962. I am very concerned about the phenomenon you discussed, and I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience. My phone number is 685-3478. Yours Very Sincerely, R. Walcott.' Bobby this is the link!"

Goren was thrilled to have a break in the case, shocked at himself for not having gone through that pile of papers, and suddenly aware that Eames was terribly cute when she had discovered a solid lead. He shook himself.

"The Forward is the newspaper where I found his obituary." He looked at his watch. "I think the NYU Archives are open until 5," he said hopefully.

"I'll bring my car around. You are allowed to walk from the door of your building to the door of my car and then from the door of my car to the door of the library. There will be no detours to look at something 'neat'."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Traffic was with them and they arrived at the library in plenty of time. Eames dropped Goren at the door and then went off in search of parking, expecting a long quest. Evelyn took charge immediately, a graduate student minion was dispatched, and by the time Eames had circled the block for the tenth time, Goren had emerged with a printout of the Letter to the Editor. As he got into the car he said,

"It's about Operation Paper Clip, I mean, not in so many words, no one back then knew its name. He writes 'I am shocked and dismayed that the government has given contracts to companies that are employing war criminals. I recognized one of the scientists at a large Manhattan company from the Mittelbau Dora Labor Camp, where I was interned during the war. This man was abusive to prisoners, and regularly gave guards reports on certain prisoners that caused them to be shot. I later find that the company has been given a contract to supply airplane fuel to the federal government. This is an outrage!' "

"I can't imagine, " said Eames, "I've seen people get away with murder, but Gruenwald must have felt that his new country was letting him down the way the old country had."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Goren sat down for a minute after Eames dropped him off. He wanted more than ever to find some justice, for Josef Gruenwald as well as Roger Walcott. However, there was a good chance that their killer was dead, or at least living a quiet life in retirement somewhere. He felt that the Oliver Barrett problem was more immediate, and there was some information he needed that he could probably only get on a Saturday night. Eames was having dinner with her sister and her mother, a girls' night out. He hesitated. He would probably need some backup, and even if he didn't, Eames would kill him if he didn't have it. He made a couple of phone calls, and then decided to dress.

He found an old raincoat with sleeves big enough to cover his cast. The leg he couldn't do much about, but he thought it might add to the air of quiet desperation he was hoping to exude. He smeared some dust and grime on his raincoat, realizing ruefully that you really weren't supposed to be able to find that stuff in your apartment.

Fifteen minutes later, a confused Lewis was driving him over the bridge.

"Bobby, you're not even back on your feet yet, and you're demanding that I take you to the Village at 10 p.m.? Sure, the most interesting girls are there, but don't you think you should slow down?"

"This is sort of for work, Lewis. All you need to do is drop me near Washington Square Park and pick me up two hours later. If it makes you feel better, I will not be getting any action."

"Speaking of people I'd like to get some action with, if this is for work, why isn't the lovely Detective Alex here?"

"Watch it, Lewis," said Goren, surprised by the vehemence of his own tone.

"Easy, Bobby. I didn't mean action in a, you know, tawdry way. I meant like, buy her dinner and flowers, to be possibly followed by action, entirely at her discretion."

Goren had to smile, both at Lewis' sincerity and his use of the word "tawdry". At the same time, he was thinking that Lewis' suggestion might not be a bad idea for him to try himself. He snapped himself out of it. He wasn't sure he could take the risk.

As Lewis maneuvered his way around downtown, he got within a block of the park. Goren got out and told Lewis he would be back in two hours. He handed Lewis some money and told Lewis that the least he could do was buy him some dinner at one of those trendy places with neon light fixtures while he waited. Lewis remembered a small café, with a cute waitress who would be worth drinking a glass of wheatgrass juice for, and he headed off.

Goren, dressed in his down and out outfit, walked into the park, trying to convey an air of aimlessness. He saw his backup seated on a bench near the arch, where the light was excellent. They didn't make eye contact. John Eames continued to eye his newspaper, peering over it to watch Goren, who was limping off to an area that was shaded by trees from the light of the arch.

Goren stood for a moment, and watched. Over by a trash container ten yards away, quite a few people were coming and going. He waited until the traffic died down, and, making sure that he was within John Eames' sight line, he approached the trash can. A very young, very thin man stood there. His light brown hair needed a cut and a scraggly mustache clung to his upper lip. The young man appeared to be selling heroin, so Goren limped up, affecting a wide eyed gaze, and asked,

"Hey, man, you know where I can get some meth? I don't want to come down too hard, and my regular guy, he got pinched."

"Try Stu at the southwest corner. Who got your guy, man?"

"Some cop named Barrett."

"No shit? I heard that guy got transferred out, like he was such bad news the cops couldn't even stand him."

"He's bad news?"

"Hell, yeah. He used to shake us all down. He'd get everybody once a month, but he'd pick on different guys every week, because I guess he didn't want to attract attention. It was like he knew how much we made, and he was bleeding us down to our grocery money. "

"No kiddin'?"

"Little Jimmy C, he found out the hard way. One week, he told Barrett he didn't have his money. He figured a dirty cop can only push so far. Barrett, though, he told some mobster guys that Little Jimmy C was sellin' on their territory. They came over to his place, screaming at him, and then they shot him. He pulled through, but his leg won't never be the same."

"How did he know it was the cop?"

"He heard them say 'This is the guy Ollie told us about.' That's Barrett's name, Ollie Barrett. Little Jimmy said he didn't tell the cops this though. He wants his life to be worth more than a dime." Goren pretended to get antsier.

"Southwest corner? Thanks, man." Goren headed southwest, careful to stay within eyeshot of Mr. Eames. He waited under a tree. Half an hour later, he walked back the way he had come, silently walking by Mr. Eames as he left the park. Twenty minutes later, John Eames folded his newspaper and took the same route Goren had taken out of the park. They met at a corner and walked over to meet Lewis, who drove John Eames to his car. As they got in, Lewis remarked,

"Bobby, you still haven't told me why the lovely Detective Alex didn't join us this evening."

"Sorry, I forgot to make the introductions. Sergeant Eames, this is Lewis. Lewis, this is Sergeant Eames, Alex's dad." Lewis gulped audibly. John Eames laughed.

"It's okay, son. Between Alex and her sister, I spent many evenings cleaning my gun in a very obvious and showy way in the living room when boys came over."

They dropped Sergeant Eames at the garage where his car was parked. He seemed shocked that they would even contemplate the idea that the Cutlass would be trusted to the mean streets of the city.

When Lewis dropped him off, Goren spent the minutes before he fell asleep pondering how he was going to explain all of this to Alex.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

When Goren awoke the next morning, his leg was throbbing, and when Eames arrived around 11 for another day of detection, she found him on the sofa with several ice packs. She sat next to him on the sofa and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Bobby, are you alright?" She had no idea how his leg could have taken such a turn for the worse since she had seen him the previous evening, but ligament tears were painful and took a long time to heal.

"I think I just overdid it. I have some new information about Barrett." He related the information he had received about Little Jimmy C, carefully omitting how he had obtained said information.

"At least that gives us something concrete. I can't believe they keep passing around a bad apple like this. I think I can get access to Barrett's file this week. It's good to have connections." She looked at him pointedly. "So, are you going to let me know which of your connections gave you this information? Was it one of your old CI's?"

"Uh, no. You know, I've been out of Narcotics for more than 8 years, and all the guys I knew are mostly gone. You don't last too long in that game. You move up, get out, go to jail, or worse."

"So who then?"

"Well, you know Roman said Barrett covered operations out of Washington Square Park. I talked to a dealer there."

"He just opened up to you, Detective?"

"Uh, he was convinced I was a person in similar circumstances to himself."

"Bobby, you went undercover by yourself last night? How? I can't believe you went in without back-up, and you're worried about my keeping an eye on Barrett in full view of the squadroom!"

"I, uh, I had back-up."

"But you didn't even ask me."

"You had plans with your family, and this was a kind of quick decision. It didn't seem like it was too big a deal, public place etc. Even if the guy had made me, I think he would have just run."

"But who –" Eames eye fell on a copy of yesterday's Queens Times. How did a copy of that end up in Bobby's place in Brooklyn? Impulsively, Eames opened the paper to the Word Jumble. It was partially done, and she recognized the handwriting.

"My dad was your back-up?" she exclaimed. "Bobby, he's 75 with a trick knee, and he's on Lipitor."

"He was my lookout, and I wasn't expecting trouble. You know your dad knows how to handle himself." She knew that. She also probably shouldn't be so hard on Goren. They were winging it until they had enough to go official, and if Barrett had friends in high places, they'd need something pretty incontrovertible. Bobby had to work with what he had.

"I know Dad can handle himself. It's just hard not to worry about an undercover operation without wires, recording devices, and a full squad providing cover. You know, the way we usually do it."

"I think he enjoyed himself."

"He probably did."

"And I think you won't be receiving much more attention from Lewis. He drove me in last night, and he met your dad. I don't think he had realized that your dad was, you know, often armed."

Alex laughed. Then she grew more serious.

"Whatever I get on Barrett about his past, we're going to need evidence that's bulletproof. The captain is going to be skittish."

"We'll need to try to figure out what he's doing with the Property sergeant. What's he working on? Anything to do with drugs, prostitution, stolen goods?"

"I know the captain has had him on the Chelsea club investigation, but he's not the lead, and most of his work has been in the office, not in the field."

"There are some possibilities there. You know, Eames, Little Jimmy said he didn't talk to the police about what Barrett did to him, and it would have been second hand hearsay anyway. I keep coming back to how the captain of Narcotics found out enough about Barrett to want to transfer him out with enough back and forth that people like Roman and Van Buren's contact heard about it ."

"And you have a theory." Goren nodded.

"I think when he told the mobsters about Little Jimmy, either the feds or NYPD had somebody in the room."

"An undercover? Bobby, I know you have a couple of contacts in the feds, so can you –"

"Nobody I know well enough to get them to tell me about an undercover in what could be an ongoing investigation."

"This just gets weirder and weirder. We need a next move."

"I, uh, I think we're going to need to do more observation," noted Goren. "But you shouldn't do it yourself."

"That's rich, coming from you. Relax, Bobby. I'll wait until we have a more careful plan. Now, we have a cold case to solve."

"Right, we need to go through the company research to find the company with the jet fuel contract." Goren made a move to get up, only to have a hand on his chest firmly push him back down.

"I'll get the reports." Eames went over to the neat pile she had placed on Goren's desk the day before. She handed Goren half of the stack. She picked up one of his ice packs and went into the kitchen to refill it, refilling the ice trays while she was there. She then came back and sat down on the sofa next to him. Goren found her proximity distracting at first, but they soon settled in. After two hours, Eames said,

"Aha! Technautics! 'Our fiscal year was capped off by our receipt of a federal contract for jet fuel.'"

"Can you flip to the section on the Board of Directors?" asked Goren eagerly. Eames obliged.

"It's a small company with only five directors: Roger Calhoun, Michael Price, Neil McAllen, Bedford Keel, and Steven Ball. They don't sound like German names."

"Whoever it is could have changed his name. But then again, maybe it wasn't the case that the people who come up with the products get to share in the profits."

"You mean the scientists were just hired hands?"

"Yeah. Are any of the project leaders referenced?" Eames scanned the Technautics annual report further.

"Here. '…breakthroughs this year were due to work by Drs. Jurgen Kronauer and Ernst Gruber whose outstanding performance …' yadda yadda yadda."

"Let's, uh, let's see what we can find out about these guys."

"Well, first things first. Dead or alive? I'm going to try the state database, but if they left New York, I might have to go through Social Security, which could take a while, depending on how many Grubers we find." Eames typed furiously for a few minutes. "Nothing in New York."

"The company was in New Jersey. Can you get to their database?"

"Sure." More typing. "Aha!. I have a death certificate for a Jurgen Kronauer in Bergen County in 1995. Heart failure. He was born in Germany, in Heidelburg in 1910."

"Right age, and there weren't a lot of Kronauers, were there?."

"No indeed. I also have an Ernst Gruber in 1981. Heart failure was very popular. He was born in 1905 in Berlin."

"So, both dead. Okay we need details. Go to Vital Records. Marriages, births," said Goren, impatiently. Eames did more typing.

"Looks like the database is down for maintenance."

"Shit. Go to the Time database. See if there's an obit."

"Yessir," said Eames, coldly. Goren stopped fidgeting on the sofa. He was doing it again. Getting wrapped up in the case, forgetting to see her. He couldn't keep doing that. As important as this case was, it was becoming increasingly obvious that their murder was probably dead. He got up and hobbled over to her. He put his hand on her shoulder.

"Eames, I'm sorry. I, uh, I guess you know how I get. Why don't we take the rest of the day off. We've been at this for hours, and we've made some headway." He felt her should relax under his hand.

"It's okay, Bobby. I can keep going. I don't have anywhere else to be today." Goren felt the need to make amends.

"We, uh, we could go do something else. You pick."

"I don't think you should be walking around." Goren cursed his leg for the tenth time that day. "But you know what I'd really like? A Hitchcock marathon and pizza." Goren smiled. This he could pull off, since the local Blockbuster had instituted delivery. A few phone calls and half an hour later, they were munching happily on the sofa, with "Rear Window" in front of them. Eames pulled an afghan over herself. The curse of the thin was to never feel truly warm. When the movie ended, Eames laughed.

"Bobby, you fell off a building in the line of duty, just like Jimmy Stewart. Where's your nurse, paid for by the department? Our city issue HMO probably expects you just to use Google and treat yourself."

Goren smiled, and looked at her bashfully.

"I have you, and you're on the department payroll."

"Oho, so these icepacks are all an act."

"I have many skills, Eames," he said rising to change the movie, "but inducing limbs to swell spontaneously isn't one of them."

"Sadly, it would not have surprised me if you could do that, but I'm in a generous mood, since you paid for pizza, so I'm going to take what you say at face value."

Goren returned to the sofa. "Vertigo" began. They watched in silence. When Jimmy Stewart approached Kim Novak's apartment, Goren whispered,

"He can't let her go." Eames looked at him. "It was too hard. He had what he wanted so fleetingly, and then he lost it." They continued watching. Eames felt herself growing more tired. As the closing credit rolled, she had her head back against the sofa, and her eyes closed. Goren impulsively reached up an put his arm around her.

"This was nice, Bobby, thanks," she murmured as she dropped off against his shoulder. Goren sat there, enjoying the sensation of being able to hold her. He realized that he was finally getting what he wanted, in some small way. He hoped he'd be able to hold on better than Jimmy Stewart.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Eames stretched to worked out a kink in her neck while she was stopped at a red light. Bobby was comfortable to sleep on, but her head had been in kind of an awkward position. He had woken her at 9:00 last night. He had told her she could stay over, but she hadn't wanted a repeat of the previous week, and Sunday was a school night. She wondered if she had made the right decision.

She had just taken a bite of her morning Danish, when Ross called her into his office. He shut the door.

"Eames, I hadn't wanted to assign you to anything too involved until you had a partner to back you up, but we've had something potentially embarrassing come up. A gun that was supposed to be in NYPD custody was used in a crime recently. The department wants to get out ahead of this, but they also want to avoid unnecessary publicity. I don't think it will be much fieldwork, just a lot of asking around. With discretion."

Eames nodded. She took the liberty of finishing her Danish before heading down to Ballistics on the fifth floor. It was sort of nice to be able to set her own pace, rather than chasing after Goren, as he enthusiastically scampered around the crime scene. This must be what her sister felt like when her brother-in-law took her nephew to the park.

The stalwart and efficient ballistics technician was waiting for her, with the reports she needed. She pointed to the screen of the computer attached to her high powered microscope.

"These are the barrel markings of a gun used in a robbery in Jackson Heights this morning. And these," she pointed to the screen of another PC, " are the markings of a gun used in a series of armed robberies in Prospect Park two years ago."

"They match," said Eames, feeling a need to restate the obvious, if only to signal to the technician that she was on the same page.

"The records indicate that a suspect was apprehended and convicted."

"Meaning that we should have the gun, not a random guy in Jackson Heights. Nice catch. Do you know if there's a suspect in the more recent crime?"

"They were cuffing him when I arrived for my initial assessment of the scene. Lousy shot."

"Thanks. I'll let you know what I find out. They probably told you to keep this under your hat." The technician shrugged.

"I figured. By the way Detective, tell your partner to get well soon, would you?"

"Sure. Thanks," said Eames as she headed toward the elevator. She had always secretly suspected that the Ballistics woman had a crush on Bobby, and even vice versa. She felt a sudden pang at that thought.

Eames returned to her desk and studied the files. The case from two years ago had been handled by the Robbery Task Force. They were on the third floor, so the gun should have been in the 1PP property office. Eames went a little cold. When the Captain had said NYPD custody, she had had a flash of apprehension, but there were storage warehouses and offices in the other boroughs, and Narcotics had to hand a lot of stuff over to the feds. Now that their property office was the one implicated, Eames felt that it was nearly impossible that Barrett's shenanigans and this case just happened to involve that office. Making sure that Barrett was not around, Eames signed herself out to "Court", but went to Riker's.

The interview area at the Riker's Island facility had always reminded Eames of an abandoned warehouse. Nesting pigeons in the light fixtures would not have surprised her. Martin Starkey looked pale and wan, and his orange jumpsuit nearly swallowed him. He had come down from his high, and was already beginning to inwardly panic about where his next one was coming from.

"Martin, you tried to rob a liquor store at 3 this morning, and frankly, you didn't exhibit a lot of natural talent for that." He shifted in his chair. Eames continued, "We need to know where you got the gun."

"I don't know nothin' about a gun."

"See, Martin, you can take that tack when the case against you is circumstantial, or maybe if it's one person's word against the other. When the cops find you waving the gun out in the street, your strategy needs to be a little more complicated. Now, I am the kind of person who likes to do nice things for people. I am going to give you a chance to help us out by coming clean about the gun. If your info pans out, I might be able to convince the DA to ignore any irregularities in how you got the gun." Starkey appeared torn.

"You got any candy?" he asked. Eames decided to sacrifice her emergency packet of Skittles. Perhaps Ross would allow her to expense them. Starkey tore open the package and began wolfing them. "It was this guy named Norbert. He parks his van near my place. He's got all kinds of stuff: clock radios, DVD players, guns." Starkey stated this last as if department stores across America routinely bundled DVD players and guns in promotional deals.

"Norbert?"

"Yeah. His parents were mean, huh? So I said I needed a gun, and I gave him my last 100. "

"Did Norbert say where he got the gun?"

"I didn't ask," he said, licking the Skittles wrapper. Eames pushed a yellow pad toward him.

"Write down where I can find Norbert."

Eames returned to 1PP. She knew that she had to check out the evidence in storage for the first case. She would have to go down to Property and requisition it. It was a step she couldn't skip, no matter that she knew what the outcome would be. She also knew that this would tip off Barrett and the Property guy. She needed some cover. She hit the database and got the case files for an open serial robbery case and another closed one. She wrote down the case numbers.

Eames once again arrived in the Property Office. She hoped that Barrett wouldn't be there. She didn't see him, but she knew that that didn't mean much. She filled out a request form for all three cases.

"Three cases, huh?"

"Yeah, the Robbery Task Force thinks they might be related. I'm helping them out this week."

The sergeant took her request and went in the back. He came out with a couple of boxes and a slightly nervous look on his normally laconic features.

"I got the first two, but that third one, that I don't have."

"Nothing, huh?"

"No, but –"

"I know how it works. The NYPD lost three of my time sheets when I was on patrol, my brother's paperwork for his last promotion, and my partner's workman's comp claim. I'm lucky it was just a box of evidence this time," Eames said, quickly letting him off the hook. He smiled, and she took her boxes and left.

So they had ditched the whole box from the case instead of just removing the gun. The rest of the evidence from that case was probably in a dumpster near Barrett's apartment. That was, she had to admit, the smart thing to do. If they had just taken the gun, the Property sergeant would have been the obvious suspect. This way, it was just another NYPD snafu, with no way to know who to blame, or to determine where the evidence went astray. Eames went upstairs and stashed the boxes in an interview room. She looked at the time - 5:30. She needed to head out to her next appointment, so she clocked out.

As Eames approached the Two Seven, she realized that she was probably in for more unsavory revelations. After telling her about what Bobby had learned, she had convinced Lt. Van Buren that they needed to look at Barrett's personnel file. They met out front and proceeded to a small diner seven blocks away. Van Buren opened her bag.

"I had to jump through some hoops to get this," she said, placing Barrett's folder on the table. They began going through it. "This is what I remember, that it seems to have been sanitized pretty thoroughly. Nothing incriminating." Lt. Van Buren sifted through the sections from Barrett's days in Narcotics. Eames leafed through some of the older pages, yellow with age. She got to Barrett's second stint as a patrolman. There was a writeup from a particularly involved case. The report mentioned Barrett and his partner. Eames sucked in her breath. "What?" asked Van Buren. Eames pointed to the name of Barrett's partner, Steven Barkis. Van Buren sucked in her breath.

They both knew Steven Barkis. They usually heard him referred to as Deputy Commissioner Steven Barkis.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Goren's Monday was perhaps less shocking than Eames', but not less informative. He had spent the day trying to wrap his head around the case. Josef Gruenwald had essentially exposed a German scientist working in the US as someone who was at least an accessory to war crimes. Roger Walcott, researching companies to see if they were investment-worthy, had come across Gruenwald's editorial. Walcott had taught classes to those German scientists. It would probably have been too much of a coincidence to think that Walcott would have encountered Gruber or Kronauer, but he had probably suspected the existence of Operation Paper Clip, so when he saw Gruenwald's editorial, it had seemed entirely plausible.

So had one of these men, whichever was the war criminal, learned of the editorial and killed Gruenwald? And killed Walcott for the same reason? But lots of people probably read that editorial. The killer couldn't have thought he could kill all of them. Had he learned of Walcott's research? Wall Street was a smaller world in those days.

The other thing Bobby couldn't get his head around was the idea of a scientist shooting someone, especially the man described in Gruenwald's editorial. That man fit the description of a petty tyrant: without the courage to act himself, he goaded guards into abusing prisoners. That kind of man didn't usually take such direct action.

Bobby decided to do what Eames would do and proceed with the concrete. If he could learn more about the men, he could learn which was more plausible as the killer. He glanced at his clock. It was too late for a direct line of attack, so he settled for hitting the databases in New Jersey that had been down the day before. Eames had left him some bookmarked sites. At first it was frustrating. Neither had married in new Jersey, nor had the births of any children born to either of them been recorded. Taking a different tack, he learned that Ernst Gruber and an Elsa Gruber had purchased a house in Bergen County in 1953, and Kronauer had followed suit three years later, except that his purchase was solo. He hit the archives of some New Jersey papers. The 80's were on-line in one of them, and he found an obituary for Ernst Gruber, survived by his wife Elsa, and a daughter, Mathilde.

Goren then did the same thing with Gruber's daughter that he had done with Walcott's daughter. He found a marriage certificate for her, and, thus, a married name. In one of the standard on-line phonebooks, there was an address and phone number for her in New Jersey. He hesitated, but then dialed. An elderly woman answered.

"Mrs. Kilpatrick? My name is Robert Goren. I am a police detective in New York City, and I was wondering if I could talk to you about your father?"

"I don't enjoy talking about him, and I probably don't know the answers to the questions you are asking."

"It's about a case, Mrs. Kilpatrick. I just need to know some things about what your father was like, and maybe about his life in Germany."

"I don't know much about what he did during the war, if that's what you're asking. What kind of case?"

"A very old murder case."

"You think Papa was involved? "

"I, uh, I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out." Mathilde Kilpatrick was silent for a moment.

"I will try to answer your questions, but most people who call me about him end up disappointed with how little I know."

"Most people?"

"Historians, mostly, writing books about the war, the Nazis. They ask about his work for the war. I know nothing. I was ten when the war ended."

"When did you come to the US?"

"In 1947. We had been living in Nordhausen during the war. My father went to work every day and came home for dinner each night. All I knew about his work was that Papa was a scientist. Towards the end of the war, we left and traveled to my mother's parents in Berlin. My father came home one day in 1947 and told us we were going to America."

"You must have been anxious. Moving to a new country, and one you had been at war with recently."

"I suppose, but it wasn't for me to question. It was just easier if you did what Papa said. It wasn't pleasant if you didn't." Goren sensed a need to tread lightly here, but he also began to see that this woman was not interested in protecting her father's memory.

"You father was…abusive?"

"Not physically. He probably hadn't the courage. My mother's father had money and connections. But he had ways of making us miserable. He belittled my mother and me at every turn. He shouted a lot, wrote nasty unsigned letters to people he didn't like. Let me give you an example of the kind of man he was. In New Jersey, we had a neighbor whose cat was always coming into our yard. My father hated it, thought it was unclean. One night, he cooked hamburger steak. When he was done, he put rat poison on the leftover meat and left it on a plate on the table outside. The cat ate it and died. My father never felt he was to blame. If the cat hadn't been trespassing, the cat would have been fine."

"I'm sorry," said Goren, "I know something about fathers who weren't really cut out for the job."

"And yet you've made something of yourself, a detective."

"It sounds as if you've also learned to move on."

"Well, that's one of the nice things about America. It gives you that freedom. One day, when I was 18, I realized that I wasn't quite so German anymore, just as other immigrants realize that they are not so Albanian or Fijian after a while in the States. Yet, I wasn't like all of these American teenagers around me either. So, I realized that I would always be different from everyone. Once I realized that, that I had to be an individual, bridging these different worlds, it became easier to see myself as a separate person from my father, that I could be different from him."

Goren was silent for a moment. At some point, he'd realized that he wasn't going to be like his parents, but unlike Mathilde Gruber Kilpatrick, he hadn't lost the fear that maybe he couldn't pull it off. He continued.

"Did you know a Jurgen Kronauer?"

"Of course, he worked with Papa. They were friends. He was kind to me, very quiet."

"Did he talk about the war."

"Never directly. Always as sort of a side comment. I think he was in a very isolated post, near Hamburg, in a small lab. I know he had regrets. They ate at him. I used to go see him, you know, when he was older, just living alone in that house. The doctors said heart failure, but some things he said, well, I believe he took pills. That it was too much, to be old and guilty."

"I, uh, I want to thank you, Mrs. Kilpatrick. I know this wasn't easy for you."

"I hope I have been some help, but I don't see how." She paused. "Who was murdered?"

"Two men in 1962, one named Josef Gruenwald and one named Roger Walcott, in Manhattan. They were shot. Do the names sound familiar?"

"No. Mr. Gruenwald, was he, was he Jewish?"

"Yes, a survivor. Is that, uh, significant to you?"

"My father, he was anti-Semitic. He learned to smile and be nice here in America, but I don't think his feelings changed. I would not have guessed a murder, though."

"Do you know if he ever owned a gun?"

"I never saw one. When my mother died, I had to go through their things. Nothing like that was in the house."

Goren thanked Mrs. Kilpatrick again and hung up. This was all adding up, but not to this set of murders. The men had definitely had shady war records. If Mrs. Kilpatrick remembered correctly, then Jurgen Kronauer had not been near a camp, while her father, Ernst Gruber, had been at Mittelbau-Dora, which was near Nordhausen. Her description of his actions matched Josef Gruenwald's. Angry and controlling, but cowardly and passive aggressive, letting other people do his dirty work for him. Would this man have shot someone? Kronauer didn't seem to be incriminated in quite the same way, but he seemed to have something to feel guilty about. In his case, he seemed to have turned inward, sorrowful to the point of suicide. Again, these men seemed all wrong for two business-like shootings.

He hadn't changed his mind about that when he talked to Eames on the phone that night to update her.

"You know, I also can't figure out how they had the gun. I mean they could have gotten a Luger easily. After the war, it was pretty chaotic in Germany. Lots of places didn't have a real police force for a while, and people were bartering everything for food."

"But couldn't either of them have brought one over, in that case?"

"If you're getting on a boat to go to a country where you are already going to be mistrusted, do you bring a gun on the boat, knowing your luggage or room could be searched? I don't know, Eames."

Eames had waited patiently while he updated her on his case. She took a deep breath and launched into a detailed description of her day, culminating in what she and Van Buren had learned. Goren listened, growing progressively more worried when Eames mentioned having gone to the Property Room to request the incriminating file.

"Eames," he said, "we need to tell the captain."

"I know we need to tell him something, Bobby, but what? We can't link Barrett to the gun yet."

"If Barrett knows you're investigating this, and no one else is watching your back…" Eames was surprised to note that his concern made her feel gratified as opposed to annoyed.

"I'm covering my tracks. Besides, Bobby, Barrett isn't as smart as you are."

"If this Norbert guy is his direct fence, though, and you go after him…"

"Noted. I think I can convince the captain that we can't do this in-house."

"You'll call me every night?"

"Sure. I've got rollover minutes. By the way, your girl in Ballistics says to get well soon."

"Sandra? Aw, that's nice of her." His tone was cheerful, not yearning

"I used to think you two might make a go of it."

"Sandra and me? No, I mean she's smart and nice, but she's really precise. I think I'd drive her crazy. I don't think she could really get me." He almost added "the way you do."

Reassured, Eames said good night. Goren set his alarm for 3:00 a.m., and lay down on the couch for a few hours. When the alarm went off, he made some calls. An hour and a half and two twenty year old favors later, he had his information. An old friend in the CID at the base in Germany had milked his contacts in the German government. Jurgen Kronauer had indeed been in a small lab outside of Hamburg for much of the war, and Gruber had been the one at Mittelbau-Dora. Both involved with the V-2 rocket project, although not too high up the chain. Gruber was definitely the man in Gruenwald's letter. Had he learned enough to be driven to murder?


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

When Eames went in the next morning, she was expecting the motioning gesture that she got from Ross. He shut the door behind her as she entered his office. She told him about the ballistics match, that the original case had been worked out of this building, what Martin Starkey had said, and what she had discovered in the Property room. She even mentioned her three case request ruse, implying that she was just being careful around the Property sergeant, who would be an obvious suspect. She mentioned nothing about Barrett.

"This is a good start, Eames. It looks like you need to continue what you've been doing, working both ends until you get them to meet in the middle. Have you talked to the guys who investigated the original robberies two years ago, just to make sure they didn't accidentally leave the evidence on a bus?"

"Not yet."

"I think that's your next move, but if you come up empty, you'll need to sit on this Norbert guy. What's giving me my third ulcer this week is the fact that the evidence went missing in this building, so we might be looking close to home. We'll probably need to go outside for help." Eames and Ross made a few phone calls.

Eames went down to the third floor to the Robbery Task Force, and talked to the lieutenant. He gave her a room and immediate interviews with the two detectives who handled the gun's original case two years ago. Eames interviewed them separately, and they told essentially the same story. They had boxed up the evidence and delivered it to the Property Office personally. The first detective, Royce, stressed that they had been under a lot of pressure from the well-heeled neighborhoods surrounding the Prospect Park to get the case solved. The second, Robeson, remembered checking the inventory sheet twice, and the gun had been in there.

Eames didn't get any bad vibes from them. Their personnel files were spotless. Their stories agreed on the major points, and they had had no time to confer before finding out that she intended to interview them. Of course they could have worked everything out when they decided to steal the gun, and sell it, but Eames thought it was a stretch that they would wait two years to sell it, or that they would risk their pensions to sell a gun with a street value of 100. Unless the two of them had deputy commissioner friends she didn't know about, she felt that this end of the investigation was a bust.

That afternoon, Eames set up surveillance on the spot where Norbert was supposed to be. To this effort, Van Buren donated a couple of uniforms, and Ross had managed to get half of the time of a rookie detective from the Nine One. Her brother agreed to take an occasional night shift if necessary. They weren't exactly the Dirty Dozen, but even this motley team could probably handle one little fence. Eames sent the rookie to the opposite corner, and she hunkered down with a thermos of coffee in an unmarked.

Goren pounded his desk in frustration. He had been trying to find some connection between Gruber and Gruenwald, and it wasn't going well. He couldn't prove that they had ever encountered each other, or that Gruber had read Gruenwald's outburst in the Forward, which seemed highly unlikely. It was more likely that someone had brought it to Gruber's attention, but what then? Gruber finds Gruenwald and shoots him? Goren had to admit to himself that much of what bothered him about this was not just the impossibility of his task, but the fact that he didn't believe in it. This M.O. was all wrong for a man like Gruber.

What really was frustrating him, though, was knowing that Eames was probably out on the street somewhere, and he didn't have her back. Goren sat back in his desk chair. He was getting nowhere with Gruber and Gruenwald. Maybe he could at least get some info for Eames. He still had a few connections. He dialed the phone.

"Angela? It's Bobby Goren. I see you're still in the Commissioner's office."

"Bobby Goren," said the voice on the other end of the line, "Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. How are things in Major Case?

"Not too exciting. We got a new guy – Oliver Barrett."

"Oliver Barrett? He's in your house?"

"You know him."

"I've never seen him, but one of my bosses has had me pull his folder any number of times."

"I think they call that attention-seeking behavior."

"I think you're probably familiar with that, Bobby. Anyway, I've heard Barkis say Barrett is untouchable. Any mention of that guy's name makes him nervous."

Bobby asked about Angela's grandmother. Ordinarily he would have followed a call like this with an offer for at least a lunch date, but this time, he just wished Angela well and hung up. He felt, for the first time in a long time, that his personal time was spoken for.

Barkis was definitely in hock to Barrett, but how? If they knew that, they might know what they were dealing with. Goren couldn't get access to old case files, so he went back to the newspaper archives. He found an article in the Queens section of the Times from twenty years ago that mentioned both Barkis and Barrett. They had been the responding officers to an accident. A car had gone off of a bridge and into Jamaica Bay. Barkis and Barrett had arrived too late to save the family of four inside. Goren made a note of the dates. He couldn't find anything else about Barrett, but there were blurbs here and there about Barkis: breaking up a major drug ring while in Narcotics, his promotion to Assistant Chief, handling a major internal investigation, and another promotion to Deputy Commissioner.

When Eames arrived home, at midnight, her neck ached, she was starving, and her antiperspirant had failed four hours previously. Her phone rang as she sat down with a Power Bar and a glass of milk. Bobby.

"Hi, your, uh, your brother told me you had taken an extra shift. Any sign of Norbert?"

"No," she sighed, "I guess nothing has fallen off of the back of a truck recently."

After updating her on his findings, Bobby then proceeded to grill her on the particulars of her back-up. When she got to the rookie from the Nine One, she could hear Bobby let out a breath of exasperation.

"Is this the best Ross could do for you?" Eames smiled

"I may be crazy, but I'm finding it hard to be too frightened of a guy named Norbert. It's just exasperating, the waiting."

"Maybe I could –"

"No, you couldn't and I'm not giving you the address of Norbert's spot. Do you really think I can't pull this off without you?"

Goren took a deep breath. She was a professional, and she could do her job.

"No, I'm sorry, Eames. I just don't like the idea of you out there without, you know, the best back-up we've got."

"It's okay, Bobby. I'll be fine."

"I know. I, uh, I'll buy you dinner tomorrow, okay?"

"That's something to look forward to. Goodnight, Big Spender."


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Goren awoke the next morning with an idea about Walcott and Gruenwald's murders. Hired hands. That's what Eames had called the scientists at Technautics. If it were revealed that the company was using scientists with ties to the Nazis, it might not go over well with the public, or with anyone who wanted to invest. Who stood to lose? Although Technautics was trying to enter the stock market, it was still a small company. The board of directors probably still owned a good chunk of the company, and they had built it up from scratch. Realistically, he should at least take a look at them. Roger Calhoun, Michael Price, Neil McAllen, Bedford Keel, and Steven Ball.

Goren first looked at the military databases. Calhoun and Keel had both served in WWII, while he couldn't find any service records for the three others. Both Calhoun and Keel had also been in the European Theater of Operations. Easy enough to get a souvenir gun and bring it home. He then called Bergen County New Jersey and made some cop smalltalk with someone in the Records Dept. Neither Calhoun nor Keel had a criminal record in that state.

The lack of a criminal record was puzzling. It meant that a piece of Goren's profile wasn't quite right. He continued his search.

Eames was having a more frustrating day. By 4 p.m., she was ready to chew nails. Her rookie was getting antsy. Their day shift uniform had left on a bathroom break an hour ago, and Eames was worried that she'd seen him with a racing form earlier. Either that, or he had one of those medical conditions you don't discuss in polite company.

A teenager in a hooded sweatshirt came up to Norbert's spot. He couldn't have been more than 17, and he didn't match Norbert's description. He seemed nervous. Eames had seen him the day before as well. The teenager had with him a large backpack. An older man went up to the teenager. Money exchanged hands. The teenager looked around, and then handed the man a shoebox that he had taken from his backpack. Eames had originally thought that the young man was looking for Norbert, but now it seemed more likely that he was taking Norbert's place.

Eames radioed the rookie and told him to get ready to move in on the teenager, but to make it look casual. An hour later, another man approached the teenager. Eames signaled the rookie, and got out of her car. She got pretty close to then before she flashed her badge, and the teenager tried to run, crashing into the rookie, who was rather tall and imposing. The teenager shrank back.

"Do you have a license to sell –" Eames looked in the boy's backpack, "steam irons on the street?"

"N-no. Do I need one?"

"And where exactly did these steam irons come from?" Eames was trying to sound stern, but it was becoming difficult not to laugh. Busted for selling irons? This kid was not going to get any bragging rights over that. The young man looked terrified.

"I found them."

The usual story, and who knows, it could even be true. Eames decided they should take the kid in, but not to 1PP. A quick call to the Nine One put a room and a holding cell at Eames' disposal. Eames put the rookie in charge of the kid, and she drove them in. The kid's i.d. said that he was 16. They didn't need his parents to question him, but they would need to call them at some point.

At the table in the interview room, Antonio seemed even smaller, and when Eames entered the room, he seemed to sink into his sweatshirt, not unlike a turtle disappearing into his shell.

"Antonio, where did you get the irons?"

"I told you, I found them. You're not going to call my mom, are you?"

Eames decided this was not a tough guy, and she decided that now was the time to change tacks to get at her real reason for bringing him in.

"So Antonio, how did you decide to set up shop on that particular corner?"

"I, uh, I don't know," he said, refusing to meet her gaze.

"Antonio, I will be more inclined to buy your story about the irons if I believe that you are a generally truthful person." Antonio looked at her.

"It's Norbert's corner, but he's gone for a while. I knew that people come there looking to buy and sell, so I figured I'd just keep his spot warm, you know."

"How do you know he's gone for a while?"

"He said so. He likes my sister, so he comes over for dinner sometimes. He told me one of his suppliers said to leave town, that things were too hot. I don't know what he was talking about." Eames decided to go for it.

"So did you ever work the corner with Norbert?"

"Only once or twice, when he needed a lookout. I sometimes picked up stuff for him. His apartment is crazy. It's like a flea market in there."

"You picked up stuff on the street?"

"Or from people, if he sent me."

Eames pulled out a sheet with six photographs. She held her breath and turned the photos toward Antonio. He looked at them and then pointed to one.

"That guy. He sometimes had jewelry or other stuff."

The photo Antonio had pointed to was the one of Barrett. Bingo!

Eames tried to contain herself. This wasn't a firm link to the gun, but links between Barrett and the fence and Barrett and the Property Room was enough to go to the captain with, enough to get a warrant with. She had the rookie supervise Antonio in writing out a statement.

Eames had to figure out what to do with Antonio. She needed him as a witness. She didn't want to hold him on the charges, and even if she had wanted to, she had no real evidence of wrongdoing. She didn't want to hold a sixteen year old on a material witness warrant or turn his family's lives upside down by sending them all to protective custody. She also couldn't risk Barrett's hearing about this and trying to get at the boy. She hoped Norbert was really okay.

In the end, the truth was the best alternative. Eames called Antonio's parents. She told them Antonio was needed as a witness, but it would be better if he got out of town for a while. Did they have any relatives out of town? In the end, Eames gave them a departmental voucher for a bus ticket for Antonio so that he could visit his aunt in Connecticut. She drove them all to Port Authority. When he got on the bus, Eames slipped him a couple of twenties, just as she did with her oldest nephew.

It was 9:30 when she arrived at Goren's, completely exhausted. He had dinner waiting for her. She told him of the events of the day. Goren noted with concern that she appeared to be nodding off into her pasta. After she was finished, he took her hand and led her over to the couch. He sat down on her left side, so that he could put his good arm around her. She leaned against him sleepily.

"Tomorrow, I have to break the news to Ross. A case involving a dirty cop in his own house, corruption in the chain of command, and the calling into question of the integrity of NYPD evidence storage."

"Better take Rolaids with you." Goren noted Eames was fading fast. "Why don't you stay? I, uh, I can go in with you to talk to Ross."

"Thanks, Bobby. I appreciate the back-up. You know how he gets."

Goren got up and gently eased Eames against the sofa cushions. He covered her with a blanket and turned out the light.

Eames woke up and for a minute, she didn't know where she was. She remembered, and she checked her cell phone. 3:00 a.m. She got up to use the restroom, and she noticed Bobby's bedroom door was open. Impulsively, she went into check on him. He was awake, staring at the ceiling.

"Bobby?"

"I'm awake. It's not always easy to find a comfortable position, what with the arm and the leg."

Eames sat on the bed.

"How does a bad egg like Barrett stay on the force?" she asked.

"His victims were people on the fringes of society, people that everybody thought of as less valuable."

"So Barrett gets passed around. Never charged with anything. In fact, he gets plum assignments because he knows something; he has information that other people think is important."

They both realized it at the same time.

"A lot like our other case," said Goren

"Only this one in the here and now we can do something about," said Eames. "Speaking of which, how was your research today?"

"I might know who committed the murders."


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

"Bobby, what do you mean you've solved the case!"

"I don't know for sure, Eames. I just had a problem with the scientists. They didn't fit the profile." Bobby turned over so that he was facing Eames. "One was passive aggressive and the other was self-loathing. I don't think either one of them could have done two murders without leaving a trace. They would have been too clouded by emotion, and these killings don't appear to have been panicked. I began to wonder who else benefited. It was what we talked about earlier, that the scientists don't get the profits from their inventions. So I started looking at the Board of Directors."

"The suits? " said Eames, leaning back on Bobby's extra pillow.

"Yeah. Two of them were stationed in Europe during the war with plenty of time to get a souvenir gun – Calhoun and Keel."

"So great, two more suspects, probably dead, and more cold trails and bewildered offspring."

"Maybe not. The killer hears about Gruenwald's letter to the paper decides Gruenwald needs to go. But what about Walcott? Why wait six months? And how did the killer find out about Walcott's research. He asked the company for its annual reports etc., but those inquiries are routine, and Technautics probably got a lot of them. "

"Maybe he heard about Walcott's research through the Wall St grapevine."

"Maybe, although I'm not sure a technical firm in New Jersey would have been plugged in, but I think he might have read the letter that Walcott sent to Gruenwald."

"It was just signed R. Walcott! It must have taken him a while to track down the right R. Walcott," said Eames, intrigued.

"Either way," continued Bobby, "the killer killed once, and then later he killed again. People who got in his way. We all have a lot of people who get in the way sometimes."

"You think he kept killing. That the first one was the hardest, and once he saw that murder could make things go his way, he jumped in with both feet."

"I checked the surrounding states. Roger Calhoun was arrested for murdering his neighbor at the family cabin in Pennsylvania in 1965. A single shot to the head. He covered his tracks though, and the police took weeks to even consider him a suspect. Apparently, there was some kind of boundary dispute between them."

"Did he do time?"

"He got life, and he died in prison in 1985."

"I guess it would be too much of a coincidence to have a killer as a director of the company where the scientists worked, and the two men investigating those scientists turning up dead. But how do we prove it?"

"If the killer did read the letter, maybe he went through Gruenwald's things. Maybe there will be some trace."

"But where's Gruenwald's stuff?"

"That's our next question."

Eames yawned.

"I think I could sleep a while longer. How about you?"

"I'd like to," said Goren quietly.

"Try to get into a comfortable position," she said, moving over toward him. Goren rolled onto his back, the only position that didn't put pressure on either his arm or his leg. Eames reached over and stroked his hair.

"Try to sleep." Goren shut his eyes. He was exhausted, and they had a lot ahead of them the next day, but he wanted to stay in this moment, here with Alex. Finally he slept. Eames lay down with her head on his shoulder, avoiding his cast.

"Good night, Bobby."

The next morning, they were all business. As they sat in the car on the way in to 1PP, with a couple of Dunkin Donuts coffee and cruller specials on the dashboard, Goren was preoccupied. He felt good about his conclusions in the Gruenwald/Walcott case. The matter at hand was something different. They would have to convince the captain to deal with Barrett. Goren knew that Ross would do it, but also that Ross might be panicked about the political fallout. If he could offer Ross a way to deal with that, he would feel much better.

He glanced over at Eames. She hadn't said much this morning. He hoped she didn't regret staying with him last might. He felt so close to her emotionally these last few days, but professionally, he felt out of touch. She had been left to carry this Barrett burden by herself. He hoped to be able to help her out here.

They had beaten Ross in, so they loitered by their desks and waited. When Barrett came in, Eames nodded to Goren. The captain arrived. They gave him a minute to get settled and then knocked on his office door.

"Detectives. Goren, I wasn't expecting to see you for another six weeks."

"Captain, " began Eames, "Goren has been giving me some assistance with the investigation. We have a lot to tell you, but we feel it would be better if we did this outside the office." Ross looked taken aback.

"I hadn't expected this to hit quite so close to home. Alright, we'll all sign out to the DA's office. There's a café near City Hall Park. This time of day, we should be able to find a quiet corner.

Ten minutes later, in a corner booth, Eames wryly noted that the comfortable surroundings didn't help to reduce the tension she felt. She began with the gun, going back over all of her evidence, trying to trace the gun both backward from Martin Starkey's crime and forward from the evidence place in the Property Room two years ago. She got to the part about Antonio.

"I showed him a photo lineup. Antonio identified Oliver Barrett as one of Norbert's suppliers of items for "resale".

"Detective Oliver Barrett? When the witness picks one of the cop decoys, we usually know it's a lousy id."

"Barrett wasn't the decoy, sir," she said, "He's our suspect." As Ross' jaw dropped, Eames explained what she had learned from Van Buren, the involvement with the Property sergeant, and the conversation he had overheard. Goren chimed in with his information from Roman in Narcotics and from the dealer in the park. He also mentioned his theory that an undercover had witnessed Barrett's use of members of organized crime."

"And you got all of this in 48 hours?"

"Well, no, Captain, I had had a bad feeling about Barrett. I started doing a little checking."

"And here I thought with Goren out, I was going to get a vacation from hunches," Ross muttered. "Now, Goren's friend in Narcotics mentioned some juice. What are we looking at?"

Goren and Eames looked at each other.

"Barrett was Steve Barkis' former partner," said Eames quietly.

"Deputy Commissioner Steve Barkis? Beautiful."

"We could get warrants, but that tips our hand with Barrett, " Eames continued. "We have to move on this, and when we do, it has to be for keeps. Barrett's dirty, and he just keeps getting passed around, because he knows someone ."

"That someone is what has me worried," said Ross.

"Sir," Goren chimed in, "as Eames said, we have one shot at this. We have to force Barrett to reveal himself in such a way that the Deputy Commissioner will have no choice but to abandon him."

"Do we have any idea what Barrett has on him ?"

"We don't know for sure. It may have something to do with an accident. A family was killed, but we don't really know the circumstances.

"This just gets worse and worse."

"I think," Goren continued, "I think we're going to have to force his hand by exposing Barrett in front of the press."


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Goren and Eames stayed in the café. They needed a fairly fool-proof plan that they could execute correctly the first time and that would essentially tie the Deputy Commissioner's hands. Clearly a sting would be best.

"Barrett's fence is in the wind, and he'll need another connection to unload his stuff," mused Goren. "We need to know who that connection is."

"Maybe he would have gone to Antonio."

"Did Antonio mention an arrangement for him to take over Norbert's clients?"

"Not in so many words," Eames noted, "but he hinted at it. Bobby, we can't use a minor in a sting."

"No, so how well did Antonio know Barrett?"

"Antonio went to pick stuff up from him at least a few times. I mean, he recognized Barrett no problem."

"So maybe what we need to do is set up someone else in the spot, someone who looks enough like Antonio that Barrett will get close."

"It'll have to be someone with the gift of gab," said Eames. "Someone who can convince Barrett that he's taking Antonio's place. "

"We may need to have them do one transaction before the sting, to win Barrett's confidence."

"One of our uniforms from Van Buren has Antonio's build, and hair color."

Eames and Goren headed over to borrowed space at the Nine One and convened a team. Ross had decreed that Goren would oversee the equipment in the surveillance van. It was the only way he could think of to keep Goren on the scene, which he knew he couldn't prevent, but in a capacity where he didn't have to move around too much. Eames thought that it was hilarious that a man who had had 38 uninstalled Windows updates was in charge of a million dollars worth of state of the art equipment, but he had an actual technician to help him.

Officer Miguel Rivera was to be their decoy. His regulation haircut was a little too short to be mistaken for Antonio's from a distance, so he borrowed a wig from a friend in Narcotics. Sven, their rookie from the Nine One, was Barrett's tail. Barrett was on duty much of the day, so they set up at Norbert and Antonio's spot in Queens around 5:00 p.m. Goren and Eames were in the van with a couple of uniforms and the technician.

Rivera was outside with his fake wares and a wad of cash. He actually had to do a couple of transactions with people in the neighborhood. When they asked about Norbert and Antonio. Rivera replied that Norbert was out of town, and Antonio was sick. No one asked for details. When they asked for guns, he said he was waiting on a shipment. He bought a clock radio and an ipod from an older man, and some clothing with price tags still on them from a young woman. Eames and Goren watched from the van via their surveillance cameras.

They got a call from Sven at 6:30. Barrett was on the move and he was headed their way. At 6:45, Sven radioed again to say that Barrett had parked a couple of blocks away. A few minutes later, Barrett approached Rivera nonchalantly, but he stopped short when he saw that Rivera was not Antonio. Barrett turned to go, but Rivera stopped him.

"You a friend of Norbert's?"

"I know a couple of people by that name. I also know guys named Antonio."

"Antonio is sick, appendicitis. He asked me to take care of things for him."

Barrett regarded Rivera warily. Rivera decided to push.

"Antonio said an older guy, not from around here, sometimes comes with decent jewelry, occasionally something a little more interesting. That you?"

His familiarity caused Barrett to drop his guard slightly. He approached Rivera with a partially open cloth bag. Eames saw Rivera make an imperceptible move toward his ankle holster, and then relax.

"Pearls. Nice. I can pass these on, so say 500?"

"Lady had them insured for 5000."

"You know how it is. I'll go 650." Rivera handed Barrett a wad of bills. Goren nudged the technician to zoom the camera in. Barrett smiled for the first time.

"So, in a couple of days, I might have some of that more interesting merchandise. Can you pass that on too?"

"Not a problem. I won't be here tomorrow, but in a couple of days…" Barrett returned to his car. Sven radioed that he was headed back toward Manhattan. Goren and Eames in the van and Rivera on the street stayed put for an hour, just in case, and then left separately. They picked up Rivera three blocks at an appointed rendezvous site.

"Nice job, Rivera," said Goren, "and you bought us an extra day."

"I had no idea how much those pearls were worth, so I winged it."

"I couldn't tell," said Eames. "We got the whole thing on tape."

"So why do we have to do this again?" asked Rivera. "This guy is dirty and we have him." Eames looked at Goren. They really didn't want to drag Rivera too far into the politics.

"We, uh, we'd like him to reveal his source," said Goren, "and I think you've got him feeling pretty comfortable. I think we're going to get more out of him."

Eames drove the surveillance van back to the Nine One. The team agreed to meet again in two days, same arrangement.

They had unexpectedly been given a day, and they made use of it. Goren got on the phone to a friend at The Ledger, and offered him a spot in the surveillance van. He spent much of the rest of the day going over strategy with Rivera, who would need to get as much damning testimony as possible out of Barrett. Eames ran the pearls that Barrett had given Rivera through their database, and got a hit. The pearls had been part of the stash in a series of burglaries last year. Jeffries had actually been the detective of record, and the pearls would have been stored in the 1PP Property Room, pending the trial of the suspects. Eames spent the rest of the day at her borrowed desk in the Nine One, putting together the preliminary paperwork on Barrett. She wanted this case to be airtight.

The day of the appointed second meeting with Barrett arrived. Things went well at first, with Sven radioing them in plenty of time to get set up before Barrett arrived. As Barrett approached Rivera, he was joined by another man who came out of an alley.

"The Property sergeant," said Eames as she pointed him out to Goren on the screen. This was a wrinkle they hadn't expected.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Eames watched carefully over their camera setup, as Barrett and his partner in crime approached Rivera. Barrett smiled as he extended a bag toward the undercover officer. Rivera took the bag and looked inside. He handled the gun without removing it from the bag.

Goren nudged his friend Sid from The Ledger newsgroup. Sid had been taking copious notes while looking at Eames' xerox of Barrett's personnel file, and Goren didn't want him to miss the visual of the exchange, as grainy as it was on the tv screenin the surveillance van.

"Nice," said Rivera to Barrett. "For something like this, number filed down, I can go 500. Who's your friend here? Should I split the take for you guys?"

"He's just a friend," said Barrett, still smiling, although his jaw was clenched. "Don't need to worry about splitting the take." The Property sergeant remained silent.

Rivera shrugged. He handed Barrett a wad of cash.

"You guys must have some connection, to be able to get stuff like this."

"We know a lot of people in a lot of places," said Barrett calmly.

"And those pearls you brought the other day. You must travel in some high class circles."

"Actually low class," grinned Barrett, "Breaking and entering, grand larceny…"

"You got a ring of guys stealing for you?"

"In a manner of speaking," Barrett smiled again, enjoying his private joke.

Back in the van, Goren was fidgeting, as he listened in through Rivera's microphone..

"Come on, spill your connection," he muttered, knowing that Barrett was probably too cagey to do so. Apparently, though, not everyone was so smart.

"It's me. I got an in, so to speak, in the police property room," piped up the Property sergeant. Barrett glared at him. Rivera sensed that he needed to smooth over the situation.

"No kidding? Well, you can bring this fine police merchandise to me anytime. Gentlemen, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship."

Eames turned to Goren.

"Isn't Rivera kind of young to be quoting Casablanca?"

"It's a classic," chimed in Sid, "and this is going to be a good story. I don't even know if we have to call Barrett the alleged thief with evidence like this."

As Barrett and the sergeant turned to go, Eames spoke into the microphone connected to Rivera's earpiece.

"When they turn the corner, Rivera, we move out. You take the sergeant, I'll get Barrett." Eames watched until Barrett and the sergeant had turned the corner, out of range of the cameras, and then she and a couple of uniforms poured out of the van to join Rivera in pursuing the duo. Goren then watched as Eames and Rivera turned the corner. He was still bothered by the presence of the Property sergeant. He had blown Barrett's cover. Was he really that dumb? Suddenly it hit Goren. He shouted into the mike that connected him to Rivera.

"Riverea, I think that Property guy might try something. I think he was trying to establish a relationship with Barrett's fence in order to cut him out…"

Suddenly, over the microphone that Rivera still wore, shots rang out. He could hear River'as panicked voice

"Officer down, officer down!"

Goren leapt from the van, disregarding his various injuries, although unable to run at full speed. He arrived around the corner to find one uniform holding a cuffed Barrett, another holding the Property sergeant, who had a gun on the ground next to him. Eames lay over by Barrett, with a panicked looking Sven holding something against her shoulder, and Rivera frantically ordering an ambulance through Sven's car radio. Rivera came over to Goren.

"Detective, I, just when I heard your message, the sergeant pulled out a gun and fired. I hadn't reached him yet. He had aimed at Barrett, but Eames was over near Barrett, and the shot hit her instead. I got his gun away, but…"

Goren went over to Eames and gently put his hand on her head. He took the cloth from Sven's hand and pressed it against the wound in her shoulder. She had already lost a lot of blood, and she was very groggy.

"Bobby?"

"I'm here, Eames." Her eyes closed. "Stay with me," he begged. There was no response. He tried not to panic. A shoulder wound - usually not lethal. He repeated that phrase in his head about 250 times.

The ambulance arrived and they loaded her in. Goren rode with her, after instructing Rivera and Sven to bring in the two suspects and book them. The EMT's brought her into the Emergency Room, and Goren was stuck outside in the lobby. The nurse manager saw that he was a fidgety wreck and brought him some forms to fill out for Eames.

Goren looked at the forms. Name: Alexandra Marie Eames. He remembered the day he had first learned that, about five years ago, when he had peeked at her driver's license while she was in the bathroom in order to learn her birthday. Goren continued to fill out the particulars. He and Eames had the same city employee health plan, so the insurance info was simple enough. When he arrived at the space for next of kin, he hesitated. He knew he should put her sister down, but he couldn't. He realized that he wanted it to be him. He sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair, with the cheap ballpoint pen poised over the space for 15 minutes. He was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. It was Lt. Anita Van Buren.

"Rivera called me."

"That's right, he's one of yours, isn't he? He's very good. He's a natural with undercover," Goren murmured absently.

"He's not feeling too confident now. How is she?"

"I don't know. It's a shoulder wound, but she was unconscious…"

"So every reason to be hopeful of a good outcome. Now Detective, I have two boys who play sports, and these emergency rooms usually come with a lot of waiting time. I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee, and you look like you could use one too. By the way, Rivera and that rookie from the Nine One are booking your perps at the Nine One."

Goren nodded as Van Buren went in search of coffee that didn't come from a machine. Ross arrived, looking distracted. Sid arrived at the same time, which added to Ross' distraction.

"So this is your reporter friend?" asked Ross. Goren nodded. Ross turned to Sid. "We're going to need you to hold off on publication for twelve hours. Sid looked incredulous. Ross and Sid worked out a compromise. The article would go onto the paper's website, but not for 6 hours. Ross sat down to wait, while Sid returned to his office to write, noting that he would call Goren about Eames in two hours. Goren was not looking forward to waiting with Ross there, but just then, Van Buren returned. The cavalry!

"Has anyone called her family?" asked Van Buren.

"No," said Goren guiltily. "I'll go –" Just then a doctor in green scrubs appeared at the waiting room door.

"Can I have the next of kin for Alexandra Eames?"


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

"Is anyone here for Detective Eames?" repeated the doctor. Goren and Ross went over. "Are you the family?"

"I'm her commanding officer and this is her partner."

"Alright, well I can't go too far into specifics without her permission, but I can assure you that Detective Eames is out of danger, and there isn't any obvious obstacle to a complete recovery." Goren breathed a sigh of relief.

"She,uh, she lost a lot of blood."

"We were able to replace that, but she was so exhausted from the ordeal that I don't think she'll wake up soon. You can see her briefly. We've admitted her. We would like to contact a family member…"

"I'll call her sister," said Goren. At least he had good news for Christina, he rationalized. He made the call, breaking the news as gently as he could. Christina said that she would be there as soon as she could. Tossing his coffee cup in the garbage, Goren went in search of Eames' room, taking the elevator up to the eighth floor and walking down several corridors that seemed endless.

Her room was set up for two, but no one else was in it. Eames lay sleeping underneath the hospital bedspread, with her shoulder heavily bandaged and her arm immobilized. Goren plunked down in the chair next to her bed. His leg was throbbing, but that didn't seem very important right now. He reached over to touch her uninjured arm. He didn't want to wake her; she needed to sleep. Goren realized that the tension that had enveloped him when he heard those shots was finally dissipating. He sat by her bedside, unwilling to move, for an hour. He didn't really care about Barrett anymore, and even his obligations to Joseph Gruenwald and Roger Walcott seemed far away right now. He had been spared the loss of the person most important to him, and all he wanted to think about going forward was how to make her role in his life, and his in hers, as large as possible.

Christina entered her sister's room quietly.

"Thank you for calling me, Bobby. Exactly what happened?" Bobby explained in very general terms that a sting had gone wrong when one suspect attacked another, and Alex had been caught in the crossfire. "So it was just a fluke?" Goren grimaced.

"I should have realized that one suspect was gunning for the other sooner. I wasn't able to warn everyone in time."

Bobby's Intensity was one of her sister's favorite topics, and Christina didn't lend much credence to his guilt. She did worry that her sister devoted too much time to this guy for very little in return, but that was a matter for another day.

"I'm sure you did everything that you could. Dad always said that you can plan carefully, and still things can go wrong at any time." She changed the subject. "I've asked the doctor to speak to me, and I'll wait here for him. Do you want to go home and get some rest?" She thought she knew what the answer would be.

"I'll stay here for a while, if you don't mind." Goren was really hoping he could hear what the doctor had to say. He got up from the chair, to allow Christina to sit down. He went over to the closet in which they had stored Eames' belongings in the biggest Ziploc bag he had ever seen. He removed her cellphone and placed it by her bed.

"She'll probably want that when she wakes up."

As Christina smiled, a young male doctor walked in the room. He seemed a bit flustered, as he flipped through a sheaf of papers.

"You're, um, Detective Eames' sister? I'm Dr. Nelson."

"Hi, I'm Alex's sister, and this is her partner Detective Goren."

The sight of Goren seemed to fluster the young doctor further.

"The ER doctor just signed Eames over to you recently, is that right?" said Goren quietly.

"Yeah, uh, it usually takes me a few minutes to get up to speed." He assumed a more business-like tone and addressed Christina. "Your sister suffered a gunshot wound to her left shoulder. The bullet nicked an artery, and she lost a lot of blood. The ER doctors managed to repair the artery, and she's completely stable. She'll have a long road to recovery. Mostly, it'll be about keeping the arm immobile until it heals properly, and then regaining her full range of motion. There's no reason to think that she won't fully recover."

"When can she go home?" asked Christina.

"She can go home tomorrow. I looked at the medication they gave her, and I don't think she'll be awake before then. Oh Jeez, is that the time?" The young resident rushed out with his sheaf of papers.

"Welcome to modern medical care," said Christina. "I'm going to head home to say goodnight to my son. Bobby, why don't you go home too." She regarded the cast on his arm and the brace on his leg dubiously.

Goren wanted to stay, but he worried that he would wake her with his fidgeting, and if he didn't, she was probably too out of it to need him there. He nodded reluctantly. Goren headed downstairs to find Ross and Van Buren still waiting.

"How is she?" asked Ross.

"She's sleeping. She can probably come home tomorrow. She'll be, uh, out for a while."

Ross smiled wryly.

"Detective, the two of you have managed to solve several cases that I didn't really assign you while you were the only one out on medical leave. I can't imagine how productive you'll be with both of you out, but I'm keeping a SWAT team in reserve all of next month, just in case. Now," Ross continued wryly, "I'm about to visit the Deputy Commissioner, and I'd appreciate your accompanying me." Goren nodded.

It was 11:00 p.m. when Goren and Ross pulled up to the Deputy Commissioner's house in Bayside, Queens. The Deputy Commissioner greeted them at the door.

"Dan. Detective, uh, Goren is it? What's the occasion?" Goren didn't believe the Deputy's hale manner. The man had to know if they were bothering him at home, in person, at 11:00 p.m.. it was something serious. Goren didn't worry that Barrett had called him. Rivera and Sven were making sure that Barrett's booking was going very slowly. The Deputy ushered them into his living room.

"My wife is taking my daughter back to college, so we can speak freely."

Ross didn't sit down. He decided to get this over with.

"Steve, we've arrested Oliver Barrett. He and the sergeant in charge of the 1PP evidence storage had set up a system to sell confiscated weapons and stolen valuables that were being stored pending trials and appeals. We have him on tape. During his arrest, his partner in crime shot one of my detectives."

"Good God, is he okay?"

"She'll live, thanks to the doctors who repaired her artery," said Goren icily.

"The injured detective was Detective Goren's partner."

Barkis nodded.

"I can see that we'll need to throw the book at him. Let my office handle this."

"So you can whitewash this, like all of Barrett's other little stunts, like getting mobsters to beat up junkies that he was shaking down?" said Goren angrily. Ross interrupted.

"With all due respect, Steve, this is going to be very public very fast. A reporter for the Ledger witnessed the whole operation, and he will be releasing a story in about two hours. This isn't going to stay an internal matter."

Barkis nodded quietly. Goren regretted his outburst earlier. This man didn't really deserve his sympathy, but he could see that anger was the wrong tack to take. Barrett had been Barkis' albatross for so long, and Barkis was getting ready to cut it loose.

"You've been carrying Barrett for a long time, though a lot of failed assignments," said Goren. Barkis nodded again. "But he's not worth it, not all of the sacrifices you've made for him. You were the hard-working one, you didn't take the easy way." Barkis was now standing motionless, staring out of his front window. "Maybe, you took the easy way just once, and you've been paying for it ever since," Goren continued. Barkis now turned to look at Goren. "It was something to do with the accident where that family drowned?"

"I was just a year out of the Academy. Barrett and I were chasing a suspect, at high speed. I was driving. I came around a curve much too fast, and I hit that family's car and knocked them into the water. I tried to get them out," he said, tears beginning to form, "I dove in, but the car doors wouldn't budge. Barrett said we had to lie, so I did. From then on, he owned me, and I've been turning a blind eye, intervening to transfer him whenever he got into trouble."

"Letting him get away with terrible crimes because he had useful information," said Goren, harking back to his earlier conversation with Eames.

"Yes," said Barkis. He appeared to have had a weight lifted off of his shoulders, which he squared resolutely. He turned to Ross. "Dan, you do what you need to do. My office won't stand in your way. I'll be tendering my resignation to the Commissioner immediately, and I'll make a statement about – about everything."

Ross nodded. They left Barkis' house. Ross kindly drove Goren home, and Goren called Sid to update him on the story and Eames. Goren left Barkis' role out. Sid would find that out on his own, Goren was sure.

As he stumbled into his own bed, Goren took the time to set the alarm for an early hour. He would have Lewis drive him to the hospital tomorrow morning. From now on, his first priority would be Eames.


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Goren sat in the front seat of Lewis' car. It was early, 7:00 a.m., and his hair was still wet. In the back seat were his duffel bag and his laptop, and on his lap was a printout of Sid's story in The Ledger's online edition.

"Thanks for doing this, Lewis."

"Anything for the lovely Detective Alex, although from the looks of that duffel bag, my chances with her are nil. Say, will I get a letter from the Mayor for my heroic participation in your evidence gathering the other night."

"I get your tickets fixed. That's not enough?"

The drive took over an hour, and it was close to 8:30 when they pulled up to the hospital, located near the crime scene in Queens. Lewis let Bobby out and went to park. Bobby headed upstairs. When he reached her room, he found her still asleep. John Eames sat in a chair by her bed. He rose when Bobby entered.

"Christina called me late last night. She said that you both were here until rather late."

Goren thought he detected a hint of reproach from the older man for not having called him earlier.

"We were, but they told us Alex would sleep through until morning."

"The men who did this…"

"Being arraigned this morning. They were…cops."

John Eames looked at him incredulously.

"This has something to do with our adventures in the park the other night?"

Goren nodded.

"Eames – Alex, she discovered a ring in the force selling stuff out of the 1PP Property Room. It was just two guys, that we know of."

John Eames shook his head. These days, maybe retirement was the best place to be. He glanced back at his daughter, and then looked over at Bobby.

"You know, I never worried about Alex getting hurt on the job. My son, now he's the impetuous charmer, and not half the marksman Alex is. I always worried he'd get himself hurt, although, I assumed he'd be luckier in love than my other children."

"You know, I'm in the room," a voice muttered groggily. They turned to find Alex looking at them, her eyes about three quarters open. "Did you get the license plate of the truck that hit me?"

Goren moved quickly to her side.

"How are you feeling?"

"I can't move my arm, which is fine, because it hurts, and I'll bet if I move it, it will hurt more. What happened to Barrett, and the Property guy? I remember reaching for my cuffs and was about to slap them on Barrett, and then, nothing."

"The Property guy was gunning for Barrett. He shot you instead. They are both being arraigned right now. I'm sorry, Eames. I didn't figure out what he was up to soon enough. I just barely had a chance to warn Rivera, when I heard the shots."

Eames groaned.

"Come on, Bobby. You know it wasn't your fault. If I'd been thinking harder, I would have realized that the only reason a certain lazy ass Property clerk would bring himself to an exchange when he didn't have to would be to try to cut out the middleman, Barrett, and deal with the fence himself. Like I always say, I understand people who do things for money."

The young doctor appeared again. At the sight of Goren, he dropped his sheaf of papers all over the floor.

"Uh, how are we feeling, Detective?"

"A little nauseous, and my arm hurts. You know, kind of the way I feel at a staff meeting. When can I go home?"

"We can let you go this afternoon. Do you have someone who can help you out for a while. You'll need to keep that arm immobile for a week, and it could be weeks or months before you recover your whole range of motion."

"Well, thank God I told Clooney I couldn't go with him to the Oscars this year." The young doctor dropped his papers again.

"We'll see that she's looked after, Son, er, Doctor," said Mr. Eames. The Doctor left with a promise to leave discharge orders and several prescriptions for Eames with the charge nurse.

Lewis appeared in the doorway.

"Hi, Detective Alex."

"Where have you been?" asked Goren.

"I, uh, there was this EMT in the ambulance bay, and she was having trouble with the siren mechanism…"

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days?" asked John Eames. Lewis noticed him for the first time.

"Uh, hi, Mr. Eames, I mean, Sergeant Eames, I mean, are you still…" John Eames smiled. It seemed to be his day to perturb the young.

"Lewis, today is your lucky day. I'm going to let you buy me a cup of coffee. Who knows, maybe I can get you to call me Johnny, since Bobby won't." Lewis walked out with John Eames, a look of alarm on his face.

Goren took a seat by Eames' bed.

"Are you in a lot of pain?" he asked with concern. She nodded. He reached over and put his hand on the top of her head. He pressed the call button with his other hand. Then he remembered the printout that he'd shoved into his pocket. He began to read aloud to her from Sid's story, which was written less in standard journalistic style, and more like a first person narrative.

"I love the part where he refers to you as 'the stocky detective from Brooklyn.'"

"He called you 'scrappy,'" Goren said. He continued reading. When he got to the part about Eames' injury, the nurse thankfully entered.

"Did you ring, Detective Eames?"

"She's in a lot of pain."

The nurse flashed Goren a look that said "Is your name Detective Eames?" and looked to Alex for confirmation. Eames nodded, and the nurse looked at her chart.

"The doctor wants you to start oral pain medication, so I'll get you some Tylenol with codeine." She left and returned a couple of minutes later with the pills. Eames swallowed them, and handed the cup back to the nurse. "The doctor thinks he can release you this afternoon." She left, and Goren and Eames were alone again.

"Well, if I'm going home this afternoon, I guess I'd better prepare for the Eames onslaught, staring with my sister and ending with several aunts who have too much time and Hamburger Helper on their hands."

"Eames, I was thinking," Goren began, tentatively, "If you had someone staying with you, maybe the onslaught could be…kept to a minimum."

"Like my sister?"

"Uh, I meant like me. I brought some stuff, in case." He tried to sound nonchalant.

"Bobby, I'd love to have you stay with me. I mean that. I feel a lot more…settled when I'm with you, which is odd, since you are the most fidgety guy in the squadroom, but you have your own injuries to think of. And since neither of us can drive, we'd be stuck at my place."

"Would that be so bad?" he asked, quietly. Alex knew that he was asking her much more than whether she could put up with him for a couple of weeks.

"No, it wouldn't, " she said, equally quietly.

"Okay, then. Lewis can take us home." Eames nodded,

When Christina showed up, shortly before Alex's discharge, she looked skeptical at their description of their plan. Goren chose that moment to go down to get her prescriptions filled at the hospital pharmacy. He knew Alex would prevail. Her personality was stronger than her sister's, and Christina seemed to like him. As he stood at the counter, his phone vibrated. It was a text message from Ross. Ross' teenaged sons ensured that his text messaging skills were up to par. Goren had watched his thumb-typing with envy on several occasions. The message read "Both no bail - G. Larc, Unreg weap, 1st deg assault on off." Goren breathed a sigh of relief. He had been sure that the sergeant would be regarded as a menace to society, but he hadn't been sure about Barrett, since he hadn't taken part in the shooting. That weapons charge had been a good move on the ADA's part. It might even mean federal involvement. He took the bag of pill bottles from the pharmacist, gave him Eames insurance info, and headed back upstairs. He met Lewis and John Eames in the elevator.

"Young Lewis here explained your plan. Do you think you two will be okay together?"

"I think so." John Eames was skeptical, but silent.

They returned to Alex's room to find that she had converted her sister to his idea. Christina promised to be over the next day with food. Bobby assured her he could get through a day's worth of meal preparations. When Christina and John left, Bobby collected Eames' belongings, handed them to Lewis, and helped her into a wheelchair. As he pushed her toward the elevator, he told her of his text message from Ross.

"Great," she said, " and you tell the ADA that if either of them appeal their bail, I will appear in court looking waif-like and forlorn with my arm in this sling. I'll even borrow Jeffries' old neck brace from his tennis injury last year."

"You don't think that would be gilding the lily?"

"You have to hit some judges over the head," she said, resolutely.

They headed out of the hospital to the parking lot, where Lewis' car waited to take them home.


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Goren unlocked Eames' front door with his right hand and held it open for her. He followed her carrying her small bag of belongings, mostly the contents of her pockets when she was brought into the hospital, and a larger bag of prescriptions. Eames sat gingerly on the couch. She winced as she sat down, as the movement jostled her arm, but Goren could tell that she was much more relaxed than she had been in the hospital.

"Do you need some pain medication?" She nodded. Goren sat down on the sofa next to her and began pulling bottles out of the bag from the pharmacy. "Okay, these are for pain, these are antibiotics, and these are for swelling." He hobbled to the kitchen for a glass of water. He handed her one of each of the pills in turn. Eames swallowed the medication, and slowly turned sideways to lie down on the sofa. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the bed?" he asked.

"That would require more moving, and there will be no more of that," she said, closing her eyes. Goren looked at her with concern, and then took the afghan off of the back of the sofa and placed it over her. He went to sit on the chair across from her.

"Bobby," she murmured, "if you want to get onto my WiFi, you need the password."

"Your, uh, wireless network?"

"Yeah." She was fading fast. "My snack. Hmmm." She was out.

Goren sat and watched her for a moment. Then he took his laptop into Eames' spare room. He opened it up and turned it on. It found Eames network, and prompted him for a password. He thought for a moment, and then typed in 'skittlesanddietcoke." It worked. He was in.

Goren looked at maps of Eames' neighborhood, and tried to figure out where the nearest grocery store and pharmacy were. He read the paper on-line for a while. There, in the metro section, was a small item – "Deputy Commissioner Resigns". So it had come full circle.

He decided to call and find out about Barrett and his accomplice. He flipped through Eames' phone and found Rivera's number. Rivera was glad to hear from him, but still sounded tentative.

"Look, man, there was nothing you could have done. I - I felt the same way, like if I had just warned you sooner…"

"But how could you have warned me sooner?" Rivera asked.

"I couldn't have. That's what I mean. It's just, sometimes our best isn't good enough."

"How is she?"

"It's painful, but the doctors say she'll recover completely. Barrett and that other louse?"

"In Riker's, in protective segregation."

"I don't envy them. They did awful stuff, but they are going to pay."

"You know, that's the funny thing. Barrett was in total denial, even when Sven and I told him how much was on tape. He seemed to think that he was going to get out of it. He kept smirking and saying he was going to skate like Nancy Kerrigan, that he had friends in high places. It was like he was on something, but he wasn't staggering or anything."

"I think he'll find those friends fade away pretty quickly once a cop gets shot," said Goren. "You're working the case and interviews with Sven?"

"Yeah." This was good. This was going to be a major bust, what with the publicity, and Rivera had really done a great job, despite having had a patrolman's training, not a detective's. Having his name associated with this case, showing up on the paperwork, would be very good for his career. A couple of old-timers had let Goren in on the kill, and on the credit, when he was young and eager (and probably completely annoying, he thought ruefully).

Goren decided to try to start some dinner. Eames' medication was really strong. He decided to start with something easy on the stomach. He scoured her cupboards. He decided to go with chicken noodle soup and baked potatoes. He put the potatoes in the oven, and returned to the living room to check on Eames, who was still asleep.

Goren was in the kitchen opening a couple of cans of soup, when the aroma of cooking caused Eames to stir.

"That smells good," she said, to no one in particular. Goren came into the living room.

"You're awake," he said, smiling. "I have – dinner's almost ready."

"I am kind of hungry," said Eames. Goren went over and gave her his arm so that she could lift herself to her feet. She winced as she rose.

"Still hurts?"

"Yeah, pretty much any movement is kind of bad right now." Goren put his hand on her back.

"Do you want more medication?"

Eames shook her head.

"I don't think I should. Besides, my stomach is just about at the point where it can handle some food, and I really haven't eaten much in a while." Goren realized she was right, and as soon as she sat down, he hobbled into the kitchen to get a bowl of soup and a baked potato for her. Eames started eating ravenously, but she soon realized she needed to take it easy, and after she had finished her portion, she declined more, despite having eaten little in the last two days. Goren handled the cleanup, thanking St. Michael, the patron saint of police, for Eames' dishwasher. Eames laughed as he struggled to put the lid on the plastic container full of leftover soup.

"Yeah, at least you injured your non-dominant hand," said Goren ruefully holding the container with his casted hand and pushing down on the lid with his right.

Eames returned to the sofa, and Goren sat next to her. He couldn't put his arm around her without injuring her, so he took hold of her good hand. Eames was surprised by the gesture.

"Thanks, Bobby. For dinner. Are you sure you want to stay?"

"This is where I want to be. Besides, I hear if I stick around, I'll get some of your sister's lasagna."

They sat companionably for a while. Then Goren remembered that he had news.

"Barkis resigned." Eames smiled.

"Barrett will not be happy about that."

"He doesn't know. Rivera said he all but threatened to take their badges when they were booking him."

"Last I heard, they get the news in the Riker's common room. Say, you know we were lucky to get Rivera and young Sven. They were green, but they had good instincts."

"Rivera still feels awful."

"Did you offer him a spot in your Needless Guilt from Taking the Problems of the World onto Your Personal Shoulders Club?"

"He's gonna be Recording Secretary. Lovely penmanship."

Eames laughed. She flattered herself that Goren would not have been able to scale these heights of sarcasm without her tutelage.

It was only 8, but Eames was staring to fade again. Goren walked her down the hallway to her bed, and handed her her array of medication. He had to help her inch her way under the covers, which he kept low so that they wouldn't jostle her injury.

"Thanks again, Bobby," she said, as she began to drift off. Goren put his hand on her head.

"Goodnight, Eames." He leaned over and kissed her forehead. He switched off the light and left the room.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

They settled into a routine. The first week was the hardest, since Eames was drowsy from pain medication most of the time, and really couldn't move well. By the second week, she was feeling better, and was using a less restrictive sling.

Goren had arranged for the grocery store to deliver. Christina or John came over every few days with a couple of meals. Eames' nephew came often with his mother, and he and Goren either played with Legos or sat solemnly together watching the Monterey Bay Aquarium's internet penguincam.

Eames' aunts also arrived, usually in pairs, with casseroles, clucking with appropriate reverence over their injuries "in the line of duty." The first time they left, Eames said,

"They don't know what to think. They have the utmost respect for the badge – it's the family business – but they still don't know what to make of a woman doing it."

"Probably doesn't help that you're shacked up with your partner."

"Well, they've had to move with the times. When my cousin Rosalie joined an experimental anarchist collective, she made it easier for all of us. Our moving in with our boyfriends looked tame by comparison."

"Where's Rosalie now?"

"School budget administrator in New Jersey."

Goren, whose childhood had featured more tuna casserole than he cared to remember, always pushed the aunts' offerings to the back of the fridge, where they stayed forgotten until they had to be thrown out. Even then, Eames checked the driveway for stray Eameses before she would let him toss them.

Eames introduced Goren to the wonders of on-line shopping, so all of their drugstore purchases were delivered to their door, and they signed up for the most splashy Netflix plan. Goren arranged for them to see their regular doctor for follow-up appointments. She was located near 1PP, and she was actually Eames' doctor, but she had become Goren's as well three years ago, when Bobby casually mentioned that it had been four years since his last physical. Eames had muttered something about "no wonder your gender dies younger," and had made an appointment for him that day. Eames' brother or Lewis drove them to appointments.

Ross called at least once to update. Barrett, when he had heard of the Deputy Commissioner's resignation, had rolled on his partner in crime. This was fine with the ADA, who was most concerned with the guy who had actually shot a fellow officer, but Ross said she had assured him that Barrett's deal would include jail time. The Deputy Commissioner had taken his attorney into 1PP one day and had made a statement in the deaths of the family that had died in the bay twenty years ago. The ADA was completely perplexed. Ordinarily, there would be an investigation and the case would be ruled either an accident or involuntary manslaughter, but it was impossible to gather more evidence and the statute of limitations was unclear on this type of incident. She had several motions before a judge and was requesting further guidance. Ross thought that the Deputy would lose his pension on ethical grounds, and that would be the end of it. . Goren wasn't sure whether that was true justice for the sex workers and low level dealers that Barrett had shaken down or worse for all of those years, or for that family, but you took what you could get in this game, and he was secretly grateful that some of these decisions were out of his hands.

Goren's biggest fear had been getting on Eames' nerves, so he made sure to spend some time outside, and some time reading by himself in the spare room every day. Eames was initially stir-crazy trapped in her home; she was not the daytime t.v. type. Eventually, she decided to use the time to get some organizing done, and she spent a lot of time going through the contents of drawers and sorting photos. Goren sometimes carried the drawers for her, and laughed at the outfits in her high school photos, but when she was sorting photos of her married days, he gave her some time to herself. In the evenings, they watched movies and reheated something from the fridge.

One night, Eames awoke with her arm throbbing, and she went out into the kitchen to get her pills. She stubbed her toe, swore, and Goren emerged, bleary-eyed.

"Sorry to wake you. I can't find my pain pills."

"They are in the cupboard. Are you okay?"

"I think it was the doctor's visit today. They replaced some of the sutures, and I think it's swelling a little." Goren put his hand on her forehead.

"You don't have a fever."

"No, I don't think it's anything to worry about. Or at least, when I have one of those pills, I won't be worried about anything."

Goren walked her back down the hall. At her door, Eames hesitated.

"Have you been sleeping?" Goren looked away. "Still hard to find a comfortable position?" He nodded.

"A little easier when I don't wear the leg brace."

"Do you want to bunk in?" she asked hesitantly. "I know I always sleep better with you there." Goren nodded again. "Don't look so worried. I'm not as fragile as I was a couple of weeks ago, in case you're worried about rolling over onto me." Goren laughed, and chose not to mention that he actually had been worried about that. He lifted the blanket, and Eames slid under it, wincing. Goren climbed in next to her and rolled onto his left side, gently draping his right arm over her. They didn't really discuss it any further, but from that night on, they both slept in Eames' room.

After the third week, Goren's cast finally came off, and he was cleared for limited driving. This made a huge difference, as now he could drive them both to their physical therapy appointments for Eames' shoulder and his leg. One sunny day, after a doctor's visit, Eames and Goren went to City Hall, with a court order for the wills of Josef Gruenwald and Roger Walcott.


	23. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Goren and Eames sat on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the tiny outer office of the Probate section. Eames had Walcott's will.

"Well, I'd like to have Josh take a look at it to make sure, but Walcott leaves something to his wife, a life interest in a few assets to his wife, and most of his estate in trust to his daughter. He specifically refers to 'my wife's ample provision from her family.'"

"Really doesn't sound like she had any real motive there."

"Our rogue businessman is sounding better."

"Gruenwald leaves everything to the Simon Wiesenthal Center."

"Do you think they still have his possessions?"

"I guess that's our next stop."

Goren had trouble finding parking, and it was afternoon by the time they entered the Center. They arranged to see the head archivist, and it took them a while to explain the situation. She looked at them.

"I have to say, when I woke up this morning, I didn't think something of this magnitude would just drop into my lap today. You really think there would be some trace of the murderer in his possessions?"

"It's a long shot, and we can make a circumstantial case, but we'd like to know for sure, if it's possible."

The archivist led them back to the climate controlled storage area. She consulted a computer.

"Cabinet 12, some of our older items. Now, you understand, we would have all of Mr. Gruenwald's papers, but we could only have kept a select few of his possessions." Goren nodded. The archivist noted that they had both already put on gloves. She went to the cabinet and removed a plastic file box. "We've tried to move as many things as we can into acid free containers." She began carefully removing items one by one. Goren and Eames began gingerly looking through them.

"I think these are his engineering notebooks," said Eames pointing to a set of spiral notepads covered in sketches and notes. Goren was reading something intently. Eames looked over his shoulder. It was in German.

"It's a, uh, letter from his parents, dated 1941. They ask how his work is. They hint at how bad things are for their friends and relatives, but they don't come out and say anything directly."

The archivist brought out more items – Gruenwald's passport and entry visa into the US, a photo of an older couple that looked like him, and, finally, his more recent correspondence. They found a carbon of his Letter to the Editor of the Daily Forward. Then, they found what they were looking for, the original of Walcott's letter to Gruenwald. Goren dropped it into an evidence bag, while Eames filled out the form that the Center used when lending items to scholars.

"We used to have more of these cases, where we gave evidence to the police about war criminals," said the archivist, "but over time, we've had fewer and fewer. Detectives, we have a couple of affiliated scholars who are writing books now. I think they'd be interested in your work."

"We'd, uh, we'd like that," said Goren. "Someone should know his story."

Eames noticed that Goren was limping as they went back to the car. She knew that it was too much to hope that he could be convinced to go straight home. Funny, she now thought of her place as his home too. She wasn't sure when that had happened. She mused silently, as Goren drove their evidence to 1PP. They went directly to the crime scene unit and put in a request for fingerprint and trace analysis. They couldn't bring themselves to put in a rush request, knowing that several cases where the suspects were alive and walking the streets really needed to take precedence over theirs.

Finally, Goren drove them home. It was odd, but he thought of her place as home. It was true that he did miss Brooklyn and the deli and bar down the street from his place. He'd see them again, he knew, but it didn't feel quite right unless Eames was with him. Maybe someday, they'd choose a place of their own together. Now he was getting ahead of himself. Yet, he knew that the time was coming when they would need to make some decisions. These last four weeks had been some of the best of his life, and Eames seemed perfectly fine having him there. In the next few weeks, they would both be returning to active duty, though, and they had to decide whether this was some kind of intermediate caretaking interlude, or the beginning of something bigger.

When they entered Eames' house, she said,

"You must be tired from all of that driving. Would you like something to eat?"

"No," he said, sitting heavily on the sofa, "I'm just going to sit for a minute."

"The therapist said I could start hitting the gym this week."

"That's great."

"I'm still banned from the firing range until further notice."

"Eames, Alex, could you come talk to me for a minute?"

He had called her Alex. This must be serious. Eames came into the living room and sat next to him. Goren was inspired by her proximity.

"Eames, Alex, I want to thank you for letting me be here with you these last few weeks. They've been some of the best of my life. I – I just haven't been really close to someone for a long time. Now I feel almost like part of your family."

"Well, that's how everyone thinks of you now, Bobby. Even the aunts, especially after you fixed their carburetor."

"I guess I just want to know whether you see this as just an extension of our friendship, or something more? And I want to know whether you've enjoyed these weeks the way I have, and whether you'd like to keep going with this arrangement?"

Eames laughed.

"Are you giving me the 'Where is this relationship going?' talk, Bobby?"

"Yeah, I guess I am." She turned to him.

"Bobby, I think you've figured out that you fit into my life pretty well. I like having you here, and I see it as, well, natural. I guess I've always wondered whether I'd fit into your life. I mean, you kind of came here with a couple of suitcases. Except for Lewis, we haven't really been living in your world. Is there room for me in it?"

"Joseph Gruenwald, his past was so horrible that he couldn't start over. My past has been hard, not as hard as his. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been. I've felt so paralyzed these last years, but now, I'm ready to, well, start over I guess."

That night, they finally made love for the first time. Goren had been reluctant before because of Eames' injuries, but now the timing was perfect. Neither stressed from work, nor encased in casts and slings, they were finally free to express their love for each other. The next morning, as he sat at the table drinking coffee, Goren said,

"If I sublet my place, I can keep my address the same as far as the department is concerned." Eames nodded as she stirred the eggs, and just like that, the decision was made.

A few days later, they took a break from packing boxes at Bobby's to go up to 1PP to get their results from the Crime Scene Unit. There hadn't been any trace on the letter, but technology that would have been unavailable in the early 60's was able to detect fingerprints on the letter. They matched those of one Roger Calhoun, a convicted murderer in the Pennsylvania database. He had handled the original letter that Walcott had sent to Gruenwald, and there didn't seem to be another explanation for why he would have been touching Gruenwald's personal correspondence files, and this also tied Calhoun to Walcott.

"So our errant company director who couldn't stop killing is the one," said Eames.

Over the last week, since she had been able to start typing again, Eames had carefully written up their conclusions, coaxing Goren though translating his notes into witness statements. She spent the next two days finishing it up. They presented the dossier to Ross, who contacted the ADA. They decided that the evidence was strong enough to close the cases of Roger Walcott and Joseph Gruenwald.

The next week, Goren and Eames asked Walcott's daughter to meet them at the Wiesenthal Center. The archivist had contacted a professor at Bsoton College who was writing about Operation Paper Clip, and the parallel story of Holocaust survivors in New York. Goren and Eames gave the archivist the dossier and, as Walcott's daughter watched, they told the whole story of Walcott, Guruenwald, Gruber and Kronauer to the professor. He listened silently and then said,

"This is an extraordinary story. I'd like to put a chapter in my book if you don't mind." Goren turned to Walcott's daughter.

"Your dad, he found out about Gruber from your father. It must not have sat right with him, because he didn't invest in Technautics, Gruber's company, which was also Calhoun's company. You were right that your dad was changed by the war. When Calhoun killed Gruenwald and read his mail, he found out that your dad knew something, and then when he found out that your dad was on the street, he couldn't take the chance that your dad would go public with his knowledge."

She looked at Goren intently.

"It's a huge relief, Detective , to finally know what happened. I'm grateful for what you did for him, and I'm so glad you were able to find out what happened to Mr. Gruenwald, too. I would have hated for him to have passed into history without some measure of justice."

"I'll do my best to make sure his story is known," said the professor.

As Goren and Eames left the Center, Eames said,

"I feel as if we finally got a good outcome for them."

"One for us too," Goren replied.

The End


End file.
